Taste of Home: German Christmas Cookies!!!

I like cooking, but baking - other than bread - has never been of much interest to me. For some reason, that changed this year.  I spent the last 2 weeks before Christmas baking cookies, lots and lots of cookies.

My kids were convinced that I had lost my mind.

I don't even eat cookies, why would I bake them?   I think the answer was: "Because I can".


I am actually planning on sending a tin of cookies to my Mom in Germany.  She has sent me cookies in the past, but she didn't bake this year.  When I told her that I would send her some this year, she cracked up laughing.

Never in a million years did she expect that I would send her cookies because (1) I don't bake and (2) I don't ever make it to the post office.

By now the baking has in fact happened and here's a picture of the tin that will be sent to my Mom (if I actually make it to the post office sometime soon.)

Unfortunately, I suspect that they won't look like that when they get there....

Then again, maybe there is a site out there that can help me with that part.  Something like "How to ship cookies by mail.com".  Wouldn't you know it, there are instructions for that sort of thing: http://allrecipes.com/howto/mailing-cookies/.  We'll give that one a shot. 

But back to the baking part: 

All of the recipes came from my trusted "Das beste Dr. Oetker Backbuch"

The first thing I made was "Zimtsterne" (Cinnamon stars).

After I made them, I was wondering why they didn't look like the picture in the recipe book. 

The stars had 5 points rather than 6!  Obviously, they don't taste the same with the wrong number of points!  A good friend reminded me that the German cookies had the shape of the Star of David.  So I went all over town looking for a Star of David cookie cutter, but I was unsuccessful.  Finally, I did find a set of German Cookie Cutters at Amazon.com.  While they did get here before Christmas, they didn't get there soon enough to make another set of cookies. 

After the cinnamon stars I made vanilla crescents, but didn't get a picture. 

Then I made Spritzgebaeck (spritz cookies) that require a meat grinder for the shaping.  Hey, what's not to like about a cookie that requires the use of a meat grinder...

My kids helped with the next variety - the butter cookies:

Then, in one last push to get enough cookies for everyone's Christmas tin, I spent an evening baking Kokoshaeufchen (coconut mounds), 

Kokosmakronen (coconut macaroons),

Scharz-weiss Gebaeck (Black and white cookies)

and Friesenkekse (frisian cookies) in both light and dark.  

One day I may manage to actually describe how each of these are made.