Traditional German Holiday Cookies to Warm Your Home and Heart This Holiday Season

I used to date a man with strong German roots. His grandmother would always send incredibly delicious cookies and baked goods and his mother would always make a few more in her kitchen. They were so delicious that I grabbed a few recipes from recipezaar.com and have made them throughout the year long after I broke up with that man. Here are some of my favorite German Holiday cookie recipes for you to try with your family this year.

Orangen-Schokoplatzchen (Orange-Chocolate Cookies)

These delicious cookies with such a long name would always come in wrapped in tissue paper every year during the holidays. I am so glad that recipezaar.com had a recipe for them. The original recipe used the metric system and I have converted them to US measurements.

3 1/4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate baking squares
4 ounces butter or margarine
4 ounces sugar
1 egg
1 orange rind, shredded
6 1/3 ounces flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 1/4 ounces icing sugar
1 7/8 teaspoons orange juice
1. Grate chocolate.

2. Cream butter or margarine and sugar. Add egg and shredded orange peel.

3. Sift flour and baking powder, and add to creamed mixture along with the grated chocolate.

4. You may knead the dough together by hand.

5. Form into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate 2 hours.

6. Preheat oven to 400 F. degrees.

7. Roll out dough to about 1/8 thickness, and cut with cookie cutters of desired shape.

8. Transfer cookies to cookie sheets and bake 8 to 10 minutes.

9. Remove from sheets to a rack to cool.

10. Sift icing sugar. Stir in enough orange juice to make a glaze.

11. Glaze the bottom of each cooled cookie.

Makes about 30 cookies.

Another one of my favorite traditional German cookies were the vanilla cookies that would arrive at our door cut into whimsical star and bell shapes. I found this recipe on recipezaar.com and the results are almost identical to the cookie Christmas gifts I used to receive.

Vanilla Stars (Vanillesternchen- German Christmas Cookie)

Dough

4 ounces cold butter
8 ounces pastry flour
3 ounces sugar
1/16 teaspoon salt
5/8 egg
Flour, for rolling

Topping

2 ounces butter
1 1/8 vanilla beans
1 5/8 ounces powdered sugar
2-3 ounces quince jelly