Christmas cookies

Hi everyone,

Christmas is around the corner, guys!!!
As you already know, I love this time of the year.

My children will soon be on holidays and we will spend time cooking, baking and be chilling together.

Normally, I wanted to post this recipe later in the month, right before Christmas to set the mood. Because honestly, the weather here doesn’t make us think Santa is anything close to pay us a visit. The sun is bright and the seeds we planted last week are sprouting.

We harvested our first radishes the other day. My little one was so proud!

But it is customary to make a gift to the teachers where we live. At the beginning of the school year, all families pooled their money to buy teacher and assistant teacher’s Christmas and birthday presents.

What a great idea! You don’t need to think about getting a present for them; you leave it to your class parent rep who truly are doing a great job.

But to my surprise, I saw parents giving additional gifts to teachers last week as we were at the school for Christmas concert.

Not cool!

I felt bad because I didn’t have anything.

And to make it worse, my daughter asked me where the present for her teacher was.

Think fast, think fast…

‘Sweetheart, you and I are going to bake Christmas cookies for your teachers this weekend. You will give her present next week.’

She loves to help me in the kitchen so she was satisfied with my answer and happily left to play with her friends.

Here are what you will need:

• 250 g of all-purpose flour 
• 50 g of almond flour
• 1 egg
• 125 g of cane sugar 
• 100 g of softened unsalted butter
• 1/2 tsp of baking powder -> pour les Frenchies, mettre 1cc de levure chimique
• Cinnamon and ginger powder to taste -> I used 1 tbsp of a 4 spices blend: cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves
• 1 egg yolk 
• 1 tbsp of water

1. Sieve the dry ingredients: all-purpose and almond flours with the spices and the baking powder, and if your almond flour as well if it is finely grounded. Otherwise add it after and whisk to blend it in
2. Use an electric whisk to whip the egg with the sugar
3. Pour the dry ingredients into the liquid mixture and blend with a spatula
4. Add the softened butter and here comes the tricky part, use your hands to mix well 
5. Once you get a homogeneous batter, cut it into four pieces and place them in a covered container and leave it in your fridge for about two hours 
6. Now you have a hard dough that is easier to work with, you can preheat your oven to 180 degree Celsius. 
7. Place a parchment paper on your baking tray
8. Work one piece of batter at a time; warm it up a little bit with your hands and flatten it with a rolling pin -> 3mm of thickness is what I like 
9. Cut the cookies with Christmas your cookie-cutters and place them onto the parchment paper
10. Mix the egg yolk with the water (and add some spices if you want an extra dose). Using your fingers or a brush, spread some on each cookie to give them a nice color
11. Bake them for about 7/8 minutes or until the edges become slightly brown  
12. Top them with some powdered sugar to make them nice looking 

Using our cookie-cutters and with a batter of 3mm thick, we baked 26 cookies

I don’t like to cover the cookies with any icing. In my opinion, the cookies are sweet enough and the icing will hide the flavor of the spices.