When I discussed making anatomically correct cookies last week, anise cutouts were truly the base of the inspiration. Another annual mother-daughter(s) event, decorating these cookies was one of the highlights of my year and, despite no longer celebrating Christmas, I cannot help but continue this seasonal tradition on my own. Unfortunately with age the patience to make body part cookies has worn ever so slightly thin. Must regress again to childhood.

Recipe Notes

Based on a classic family recipe, everyone in mine seems to have a preference for how these cookies are made. Some like them burnt, some don’t like sugar sprinkles and others express size preferences. Here are a few tips to get what you want out of your cookie:

• To obtain a crisp and slightly burnt cookie roll the dough out very thinly and/or use smaller cookie cutters and/or increase baking time by a minute or three.
• If you prefer a softer end result, don’t go thinner than 1/8 inch and err on the side lesser cooking.
• To piss off your uncle, put a tonne of coloured sugar on as decoration. Of course I don’t know this out of experience or anything.
• For evenness in cooking, try to make sure all the cookies in the oven at one time are of uniform size and thickness.

The last time I visited my family in the U.S. my mother passed along an old German baking manual and I recently got around to taking a look at its inspiring if somewhat dated recipes. A German book printed in the early 1970s at a guess, there’s no such thing as a vegan recipe in its contents. It’s a good thing veganising most (imagine me sighing in memory of macarons) cookies is pretty straightforward!

When I bake cookies, I have all sorts of good intentions. I tell myself things like “just have 2 or 3 a day and they will last” or “maybe if you only make a dozen you’ll be more likely to savour them so they last until the weekend.” Sometimes I even tell myself I should save some for my hard-working husband.

I generally eat all the cookies by myself, quickly. Paul, if he’s lucky, might manage to scavenge a couple.

Recipe Notes

Raise your hand if you’ve already thought, “but wait a minutes! Those aren’t black and white cookies!” What you might traditionally think of as black and white cookies are coated with split black and white fondant frosting, apparently quite a favourite in New York. These cookies, however, resemble a shortbread with a mild cocoa rum twist.

I use a couple of teaspoons of rum in the recipe. Its impact on the overall flavour isn’t huge, but it does add a mellow extra something. If you don’t have any though, I don’t think the world will end if you leave it out.

Get creative with the dough! You’ve got two different colours on your hands, so twist and twirl it to your heart’s content and make some cool designs! The easiest is to make two small balls of dough and press together. Other options include mixing the dough together a bit so you get a swirled effect. You can also roll the dough into thin snakes for spiral effects.

German cookies tend to use far less sugar than American and British counterparts. This of course means they are less sweet, but it doesn’t mean they’re less good! Besides, it means it’s more acceptable that I eat virtually the entire batch by myself.

Right?