While most people were preparing for Halloween last week, an assortment of women from three generations of our family got together for a very important annual task -- we produced the first batch of Christmas cookies.

We converged at my sister's place in Benezette, PA.  My mom and niece traveled the 20 miles from St. Marys, and my sister from Ohio brought me from my home in Williamsburg.  The weather cooperated by sprinkling a few snowflakes to help set the mood, and our attention to colored sugars and jimmies was occasionally distracted by an elk wandering past a window.

As near as I can tell, the recipe came with my ancestors from Bavaria, Germany in the mid-1840s.  It includes flour, eggs and butter, as well as rose water and baker's ammonia.  The dough is rolled, then cut into shapes with cookie cutters.  The unbaked cookies are arranged on cookie sheets for baking, but not until they have been decorated.  Each cookie gets an appropriate assortment of coarse or fine sanding sugar, jimmies and candy shapes.  Some are real works of art, almost too pretty to eat! (Recipe included at end of this post.)

The decorations awaiting cookies.

Rolling the dough and cutting the cookies.

Decorating the cookies, one by one.

The finished cookies.

A regular visitor to Benezette -- an elk.

Grammy Peg's Christmas Cookies 

2 lbs sugar (4 cups)

1 ½ pounds butter (6 sticks)

10 eggs

2 tbls rose water

2 tbls vanilla

2 tbls baker’s ammonia

12-15 cups flour

Roll flat, about 1/8-inch thick.  Bake at 350 degrees for 8 minutes. 

Depending on size of cutters, makes hundreds of cookies, so make sure you've got lots of helpers to decorate!