German Butter Cookies 08

     

I love these little cookies.

They're soft and buttery and dangerously easy to consume in large quantities without noticing until the cookie jar contains nothing but crumbs.

The dough comes together quickly and easily - just a matter of combining butter and sugar, eggs, flour and "1 knife tip Baking Soda" and then refrigerating for a couple of hours before rolling out.

 

Even after you chill it for a few hours, the dough will still be somewhat soft and sticky and tricky to work with.  You can roll it out between sheets of plastic or waxed paper if you want to, or just dust your board and rolling pin lightly and frequently with flour. 

In the years that I've been making these cookies, I've always used the same tiny cutters that I remembered Bill's mom using.  An angel, a tree, a snowman, and a stocking.  It was important to me to keep things exactly the same as they'd been in the years before.

This year, I used some of those cutters and some other tiny ones.  I didn't use the little stocking - the tiny little loop part kept sticking to the inside of the cutter no matter what, and I just didn't feel like fighting with it.  So I used a little bell.  And a little musical note.  And, with the very last of the re-rolled scraps of dough, I used a star.

I brushed each cookie with egg yolk, as usual, and baked them for 12 minutes.

     

Julia wanted to get into the fun as well.  I was rolling these out last night, about an hour before the kids' bedtime, and so I told her to pick out six cookie cutters and she could make some for herself.

She chose a cow, a bell, a duck, a soldier, a penguin, and a lion.  After she cut them out, I painted them with egg yolk and let Julia decorate them.  She carefully placed the little tiny sugar trees and sprinkles on each cookie...well, okay, some more carefully than others.

 

I think somewhere Bill's mom is getting a HUGE kick out of Julia.

If you'd like the recipe and to look through last year's post about these delightful little cookies, click here.

And if you'd like a printable recipe, click here.