It’s beginning to look a lot like a blizzard,
Everywhere you go. . . .
A blizzard of confectionary sugar, that is. It’s Heritage Cookie Week—time to haul out the recipe cards penned in beautiful cursive by our ancestors and bring them back to life. If, in the process, we can pass these special treats on to the next generation, we are doubly rewarded.
My mother’s only Christmas cookie was the Swedish Heirloom, made from grated blanched almonds, butter, confectionary sugar, and little else. If there were a competition for the “World’s Messiest Cookie,” these would win hands down. In competition for the “The Most Irresistible Cookie-Dough,” they would at least place.
My earliest memory of making Swedish Heirlooms with my mother, beyond spraying almond slivers all over the floor when I worked the grater, involves trying to catch her with her back turned so that I could get another pinch of the batter. This annoyed her because the more we ate, the less she had to shape into crescents. Swedish Heirlooms were not desserts. They were her signature gift to everyone in the neighborhood, church, and family.
My mother baked her Swedish Heirlooms with a certain amount of inappropriate language coupled with waves of love. Quite honestly, she hated everything about the kitchen except the coffee pot. Her definition of hell (clever I think) was being chained eternally to a cook stove. The onerous responsibilities she bore caring for siblings in a Brooklyn tenement while her immigrant mother endured the hardships of labor in the Garment District, surely explained this attitude. She never talked about that period of her life.
Unlike my mother, I do like to cook, although every recipe seems like a rediscovery of basic chemical principles. Oh, how I admire people who whip up meals as if embroiled in a grand adventure. To me, a recipe is always an exam one may fail.
But Swedish Heirlooms are hard to mess up. Unlike my mother, an Orthodox Jew married into a family of Virginia mountain folks who had her hands full establishing Christmas traditions, I have the advantage of receiving her traditions and also celebrating the long season of Advent. That translates into realizing “Christmas” cookies do not have to be delivered by December 24. In fact, the last thing any person wants to see on December 25th is another cookie, unless that person has been keeping a fast during Advent. But a week later? Fresh Christmas cookies will look mighty good.
So today, as many of you either conclude (or commence) holiday baking, take extra pleasure in pulling out your heirloom recipes—maybe cookies, maybe cranberry sauce or stuffing. Of course you could go to a store and buy deliciously treats ready for you. But if you are able to revive the treasures of someone long ago, remind yourself that you are watering the soil where that person’s accomplishments and love blossom again and spread a bough to you, and to those yet to come.
What a lovely trip into your mother’s kitchen (and yours). I’m tempted to try those messy-but-tasty-looking cookies. Thank you for sharing!
I really love this reflection. You could have titled it “Of Inappropriate Language and Confectioner’s Sugar.” Many women can relate. Merry Christmas!
Hmm.. what about the backside of the card? Baking time… etc. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for the Swedish Heirloom recipe. I also love to cook, but I also relate strongly to your comment: “Oh, how I admire people who whip up meals as if embroiled in a grand adventure. To me, a recipe is always an exam one may fail.” I follow recipes religiously, with precise measurements and when the result is not as expected…..I feel VERY disappointed (forget about the choice words that may result!).
What a beautiful and yet real-life reflection. Thanks for sharing! Now I want to try the recipe you shared! May I ask, is that the whole thing in the photo, or is there more to it? :)
I have an old chocolate chip cookie recipe from the back of a Lady Lee package that I wrote down as a child decades ago. The state of my card looks very similar.
But please, what is the rest of the recipe so we can make your mum’s heirlooms?
I love this post :D
Amy T
Thanks for the family story, and now I am left with questions.
What country did your grandmother emigrate from? What year?How did your parents meet? How did your mom do with Christmas traditions? Was she successful?
Fabulous post, as usual. I love the Advent Calendar. Thank you!
Thank all of you for the lovely comments on this post. Amy T., what great questions. I would love to answer them in a post because her life reflected the lives of so many of all of our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents who came through Ellis Island or into Galveston or through another route to this country.
But to the more urgent matter, let me please now give you the back of the recipe card for Swedish Heirlooms . . . and thank you so much for asking!
Here are her directions, transcribed with a few comments.
–Cream 1 cup of margarine. (Keep in mind that “margarine” was “the thing” when she wrote this–the idea that it was better than butter; I have used both margarine and butter, and both work fine)
–Add gradually 1 cup confectionary sugar and 1/2 teaspoon salt.
–Add 4 1/2 to 5 ounces grated blanched almonds. (We grated the almonds with a grate, but whole, white blanched almonds are hard to find, so you can also grate up the ones in thick slivers. I order the whole blanched ones on line and they come pretty quickly.)
Blend in 2 cups of all purpose flour.
–Mix thoroughly.
–Add 1 tablespoon water and 1 tablespoon vanilla
Use 1 level tablespoon of dough for each cookie.
Roll into a ball. Shape into crescents.
[NOW the missing part from the back of the recipe card]
Place on an ungreased baking sheet
Bake 325 degrees F for 10-12 minutes
When bottoms are slightly brown, they are done
Cool
Roll in sugar [confectionary/powdered sugar) several times.
Insofar as when they are done, she said it just right. Try to have some slight brown outlining at the edges, but just light brown. If the points get too brown, you will disguise it anyway with the powdered sugar.
Ahhh, the sugar! Here it comes:
In her practice, they would be cooled, and then plunged into deep baking dishes (like glassware for baking lasagna) where they would float in one or two layers within oceans of confectionary sugar. They stayed there overnight! She would usually turn them individually so that they coated thoroughly.
Then the next day they would go into cookie tins where they also lived in clouds of confectionary sugar. Hence my statement that they had to be the messiest cookie in the universe. Note too that the finished product can be brittle, and is very rich. So a “gift” tin that might have 7, 8-12 cookies in it still makes a goodly amount.
Also, she liked those almonds grated perfectly–I didn’t do so well with that But if you have some little chunks in there it’s just fine.
Again, thank you so much for asking!