Father Christmas Cookies….

Vanilla & Butter Cookies (Father Christmas Cookies)

Christmas to me has become all about the so many things I can do with my children (and should be doing more of)…because I am often rushing around and not taking as much time as I could do at other times. 

I have a singular point of view when it comes to my kids as well – I want them to grow up knowing things….how to do things, make things, create the life, food, home and work they would most like to do.

How to follow their dreams and listen to their hearts as they walk through a better world we have worked so hard to create on their behalf. Because, well, I have long felt as if I was misinformed (or uninformed) and certainly ill prepared with life as I have come to know it.

With this in mind (nothing small around here!!! LOL), I wanted to bake some treats together with them this week for our Solstice and Christmas celebrations (I know, it’s a big cookie to bite off!).

We decided on some sort of butter cookie….well, it had butter in it (lol) and flour, almonds and then the greatest flavour of the season – homemade vanilla extract. I make mine in a large bottle of bourbon – using 8 or 10 vanilla bean pods as well as some scraped out vanilla beans.

These sit for several weeks and then months until you can’t walk by the bottle without smelling wafts of vanilla perfuming the air (available in the market stall on occasion)….lovely!

So, these are butter and vanilla cookies, right? 

Back to the story or recipe….which is really a tale of how to create something magical from ingredients that seem rather ordinary on their own.

To make these cookies we used:

500 g flour (whole wheat/strong white ½ and ½)

250 g raw cane sugar

380 g butter (soft)

125 g ground almonds

 2 – 3 tablespoons  Bourbon vanilla

¼ teaspoon sea salt

dark chocolate (melted in double boiler)

imagination!

Blend the butter and then slowly add the sugar, almonds, flour, salt and finally vanilla – keep mixing until soft and crumbly. Add extra vanilla if this seems too dry. You should be able to squeeze the mixture together into a soft dough.

Onto a floured board or baking paper, knead some of the dough  and then roll it flat…let the children take over with cookie cutters, shapes and fingers to make the cookies into whatever shape they need to create.

At this time of the year we all like stars, ginger bread men, hearts and trees. Once you have enough shapes to cover a large baking sheet – place them onto parchment paper and into an oven set at 180C or so for 10 to 12 minutes.

Watch them closely because they will brown quickly. 

Once done and out of the oven, cool slightly then remove with a palette knife onto a cooking rack. When completely cool, dip in the melted chocolate and decorate with some coloured bits from the organic shop….

They taste as good as they look! We like to make different sized star shapes and stick them together using dark chocolate in the centre….we refer to these as Father Christmas cookies here, because these are the ones we leave out for him on Christmas Eve.

Happy Holidays!

April

Father Christmas Cookies