From A Sweet Year © 2024 by Joan Nathan. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Aunt Lisl’s Butter Cookies
June 21, 2021
Gabriela Herman
When I was a little girl, I always looked forward to visiting my aunt Lisl at Hanukkah. In her breezeway between the garage and the kitchen, in airtight containers, she stored the most delicious Bavarian butter cookies, which she made from the recipe she’d had since her childhood in Augsburg, Germany. I delighted in decorating and then eating them, and taking some home with me.
Throughout my life, I have found that one of the best things about cooking with relatives is that it’s a great time to ask for family stories. While we baked, Aunt Lisl told wonderful tales of my father’s and her childhood before World War I and making these delicious cookies every December. Now I try to make the dough ahead of time, and when children enter my house we cut them out and bake them, then gobble them up for dessert.
Ingredients
For the Aunt Lisl’s Butter Cookies
- ½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter or vegan spread, softened
- ¾ cup sugar
- 2large eggs plus 1 egg, divided
- Dash salt
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1egg yolk, plus chopped nuts and raisins
- or 1 egg white, plus blue and white sprinkles
Equipment
- Measuring cups
- Measuring spoons
- Mixing bowl or stand mixer
- Wooden spoon
- Rolling pin
- 2baking sheets
- Parchment paper
- Cookie cutters or toothpicks
- Pastry brush
- Metal spatula
- Cooling rack or flat plate
Yield: Makes 48 cookies or more, depending on your cookie cutters
Preparation
To make the Aunt Lisl’s Butter Cookies
- Step 1
Child: Using a bowl, or a stand mixer with a paddle, cream the butter or vegan spread and sugar. Then mix in the 2 eggs, salt, vanilla, and 3 cups of the flour. Let the dough rest for at least 30 minutes in the refrigerator.
- Step 2
Adult with Child: Toss the remaining ½ cup of flour on a board or over your rolling pin, and roll out the dough to ⅛ inch thick. Then preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line the baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Step 3
Child: You can either use cookie cutters, or use the point of a toothpick like a knife to cut out cookies in any shapes you want. Let your imagination run free: how about dreidels, Stars of David, candles with flames attached, or the four Hebrew letters on the dreidel?
- Step 4
Gently transfer the cookies onto the baking sheets. Then either brush them with egg yolk and sprinkle with nuts and raisins, or brush with egg white and decorate with blue and white sprinkles.
- Step 5
Adult: Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the cookies are golden brown. Use a metal spatula to gently remove each cookie from the baking sheet to a cooling rack or flat plate.