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Share your favorite recipes for holiday cookies and try out everyone else's.
Or just bake a bunch of cookies and eat them. That's good too.
Clockwise from left: Finnish Butter Cookie, Candy Cane Cookie, Wishing Star

I'm going to start with a classic in my family, proving how white bread we are. This was in a ladies' magazine in the sixties, and has been reposted and reposted in so many I don't know which one it started with. This is the recipe as I learned it, there are some variations, which frankly I don't like as much.



1 cup butter (Never use margarine unless eating milk will make you swell up and die. It's worse for you and it tastes horrible)
1 cup powdered sugar
1 egg
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon red food coloring
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract

Mix everything except for the red food coloring together until it vaguely resembles white playdough.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Divide dough into halves. Color one half red by mixing in the food color.

Divide each of the lumps of dough with a pasty knife (or what have you) into quarters, then quarter each of the quarters. Roll these pieces of dough into cylinders, then twist a white cylinder around a red one like a rope and then roll that together so that it's smooth like a candy cane.

If these twists have gotten longer than three inches or so, which they probably have, cut them in half before forming them into candy canes directly on the cookie sheet. You might use some baking parchment on the sheet, but greasing it is not necessary. These are shortbread cookies with an entire cup of butter in them, they will come right off.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven.

One last one, and then I'll let someone else post.

Wishing Stars

1 1/2 cup sugar
1 cup butter
1 egg
2 tablespoon of molasses
1/2 teaspoon grated citrus peel (lemon or orange will do)
3 1/14 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Mix all the ingredients together, then chill for an hour. I meant the dough, but you can chill, too. cool
Roll into an eighth of an inch and cut into stars.
Bake for eight minutes at 375 degrees.

Decorate with royal icing, which, as we all know is
2 egg whites
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
3 cups confectioners powdered sugar, sifted
All mixed together.


The cool thing about wishing stars is the way you eat them. Place the star in your palm and press down in the center with your finger, making a wish. If the cookie breaks into three pieces, and you eat those pieces without saying anything, you get the wish. If it breaks into two or four pieces, you get a cookie.