The Missing Christmas Cookie Recipe

The Missing Christmas Cookie Recipe

Baking cookies has been a big part of why I love Christmas ever since I was old enough to peek over the counter in Mom’s old farmhouse kitchen.

I remember then, how she devoted so much time and effort to baking a wide variety of Christmas treats for all of our family and friends.  I can still picture all the many Tupperware containers stacked in every nook and cranny of that old kitchen. And they also found their way to the dining room and front porch too.

As she would say… there was nothing fancy about those cookies.

Just plain-old fashioned recipes she found in local church cookbooks. Back then Mom didn’t have any fancy tools and gadgets. When she decorated her soft buttery cut-out cookies, she spread the frosting on with a knife and sprinkled them with a bit of red and green colored sugar. That’s it. And when she left her Peanut Butter Blossom cookies in a bit too long, we celebrated because those cookies didn’t go in the gift boxes they went in our tummies!

Later, when I had a daughter of my own, I decided I wanted to carry on those same traditions. I wanted to share all those same recipes with my daughter, along with new ones that we would create together.

Years later, when Mel was about seven years old, a new friend came into our lives. Maggie was one of the kindest, most generous women I’d ever known. And though we didn’t have a lot in common, and she was much older than I, we did share a passion for baking and a true love of Christmas!

The following year we even decided to gift each other with some of our favorite Christmas treats!

I’ll admit when I first opened my gift box from Maggie my heart sunk, and I wished at that very moment I could disappear into the sofa. There lying nestled in a pretty tissue paper were the most beautifully decorated cookies I had ever seen.

There were eight different cookies total and they were all perfectly perfect. Right down to the prettiest ones of all. Which were round with decorative edging. Sitting in the center of each powdered sugar-dusted cookie was a tiny star filled with Rasberry filling.

 I immediately felt the rush of embarrassment hit my face as I watched Maggie open up her box.

A box that would be filled instead with misshaped-looking blobs with chocolate kisses and sugar cookies frosted with a knife! I was totally expecting Maggie to laugh hysterically at the hot mess inside, but instead, she burst into tears.

That was when I first learned of Maggie’s ongoing health issues. And over a cup of coffee and several of our cookies, I also learned that Maggie hadn’t baked those cookies at all. Instead, because she hadn’t been feeling well, she’d stopped at Byleries and picked out some of her favorites. After opening up her gift box and seeing all the time and love I’d put into it, she felt totally guilt-ridden and completely inadequate.

When I shared my own feelings of inadequacy based on the not so fancy cookies I’d gifted her, we both ended up having a good and much-needed laugh!

Over the years, our choices of gifts changed. Although no less meaningful, we had silently made a packed not to stress out over them quite as much.

And for some reason, we often bought each other similar gifts. One year we even gifted the other with the same cookbook. Like me, Maggie also collected cookbooks. Her’s was quite enviable, as she’d been doing so for over twenty-five years.

She even had a Byerly cookbook! Which included the recipe for those pretty cookies she’d given me that very first Christmas! Maggie advised me one Christmas that they were called Linzer Cookies. But that they weren’t really cookies at all. They were tarts! I told her I didn’t care what they were called!

They had become one of my favorites.

And so I asked if she would share the recipe. She promised she would send it to me that very next week.

Unfortunately, Maggie’s health began to deteriorate more and more after that Christmas, and we both forgot about the recipe. There were more important things to think about.

A year later, three weeks before Thanksgiving I received a call from Maggie’s brother. She had passed away.

It had been expected. She and I had talked about it. I should have been prepared. But I wasn’t.

The days that followed were difficult at best, and though I tried my hardest I just couldn’t get into the spirit of Christmas. And for the first time since I lifted myself up to see over mom’s counter, I didn’t feel like Christmas baking either.

Then two weeks after Christmas had passed, I received another phone call from Maggie’s brother. This time he told me that Maggie had wanted me to have something and could I come over and pick it up.

I went to Maggie’s house the very next day. Her niece was there to greet me. As we walked into the always neat and tidy kitchen, Krista pointed to a gigantic box in the corner. On top of a pile of books was a long wooden box filled to overflowing with handwritten recipe cards.

Krista said Maggies wish was that I take the box and whatever cookbooks I wanted.  And then she pulled out the Linzer cookie recipe from the wooden box.

After weeks of keeping my emotions in check, I broke down right there in the center of Maggie’s kitchen. In front of Krista and everyone else who was there to pack up her things.

But they all understood. We all missed her so much. And we would…always.

And so with a heavy heart, I took the cookbooks I’d chosen. Along with the wooden box of recipe cards and went back home.

That night I sat down at the kitchen table and went through the recipe cards. But no matter how many times I thumbed through the cookie section, I couldn’t find the Linzer cookie recipe.

I’m not sure which was harder that night.

The realization that my friend was truly gone, or the fact that in less than a couple of hours I’d already lost our favorite cookie recipe.

Two years later I moved away and into our current home. That year my daughter came home from college for Christmas break and together with mom we re-started our old tradition of Christmas baking.

It was wonderful being surrounded by family and we even started a few new traditions that year. Yet, I still couldn’t help but feel like something was missing.

Especially when we began to fill the pretty boxes with the MANY cookies we had baked. Although I’d tried several recipes I’d found in cookbooks or online, none of them were as good as Maggie’s Linzer cookies.

When I mentioned how I wished I hadn’t lost the recipe to Mel, her response got me thinking.

“Maybe you’re not looking in the right place.”

That was it!!

My legs couldn’t move fast enough to the bookshelf where I kept my cookbooks and the wooden recipe box that Maggie had gifted me.

I quickly thumbed through the neatly handwritten sections until I came to one marked “Tarts” and there front and center was the recipe I’d thought I’d lost forever!

Although I didn’t have the special Linzer cookie cutter that the recipe called for I made a batch that very afternoon. I didn’t think Maggie would have minded that I made stars instead of the traditional round cookies. Nor that I used the end of a frosting tip for the center instead of a star.

I still do.

Nothing fancy here. Just a love for baking. And most of all for my family.

Maggie was part of both and always will be.

Here is her recipe:

I hope you enjoy Maggie’s recipe as much as our family has.

I also hope today’s post reminds you to give yourself grace. This time of year can be quite stressful for some. And oftentimes all we see on social media is ‘perfection’ which can make many of us feel inadequate and ruin the true meaning of Christmas. Please don’t let it ruin yours.

Christmas, unfortunately, can also be a time of sadness, when we mourn the loss of those we love. Give yourself permission to do so.

Creating traditions and carrying them on, no matter how big or small is one way we can keep those who have passed with us for all the Christmas’ to come!

Thank you so much for stopping by!

Here are a few more Christmas goodies!

 

 

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