The Holiday Sweet: My 5 favorite Sweet Christmas Dishes
I’m spending way too much time contemplating my favorite holiday sweet, especially when there are so many savory Christmas dishes to celebrate. I’ve totally disregarded the memories that can be brought back from recalling smell alone. An oven roast, coated with the warm floral aroma of thyme, rosemary, sage, with hints of garlic and sweet onions permeating your family home is Christmas cooking to many people who don’t care for holiday sweets.
I have many smell memories of holidays past. The poultry seasoning, the steaming turkey pan drippings just from the oven brings a family reunion smell to my mind, but holiday sweets bring back the strongest memories to me.
It seems we allow ourselves greater indulgences in holiday cooking. Halloween to New Years, we deserve real butter on our bread, some real cream in the coffee, and a festive holiday sweet that brightens our mood, ends a family meal, or is an expression of creativity and gratitude.
Spritz cookies are just this combination of sweet holiday bliss with artistic creativity that makes them beautiful enough to give as gifts. My second favorite holiday sweet is the melt-in-your-mouth butter cookies that are pressed into holiday cookie shapes and decorated in myriad ways.
The German Spritzgebäck cookie is the grandfather of our modern spritz cookie, they are four simple ingredients, butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and made into a dough that can be pressed or piped into shapes as a traditional holiday dessert.
Once you’ve created the wreaths, trees, bells, snowflakes, reindeer, santas, or stars from your spritz cookie dough and baked them until just barely beginning to brown, you’ll get the most childhood fun from decorating. Edible glitters, sprinkles, or dusting sugars make a Christmas cookie winter wonderland in a bakery box. That’s the reason spritz cookies are my second favorite holiday sweet.
Turn Holiday Cooking Stress into Holiday Cooking Success this year.