This is a comfort food cookie for a winter’s night with a glass of cold milk or great cup of tea.

Here’s a great cookie for Christmas, or anytime. And depending on your taste, you can make it several ways: With nuts, without nuts, with cinnamon sugar, or with cinnamon sugar and nuts. It’s all how you feel that day (or if anyone has a nut allergy, just go the cinnamon route). If you’re a cinnamon freak like me, I went with the cinnamon sugar option. This is your basic refrigerator, slice and bake cookie, so is easy to make. You can make up the roll of dough ahead of time, and keep it in your fridge until you’re ready to bake. The origin of this cookie came from one of my older cookbooks, Cookies for Christmas, but as is usual with me, nothing ever stays as written. I have to tweak. Hence, the different “coatings.” Full info on the book is below, to give credit where credit is due.

The key ingredient in this cookie is cinnamon, my favourite spice. I use it year round, in lots of things. Most of the cinnamon sold in supermarkets is cassia, not what is called in English, true cinnamon, or cinnamomun verum [1). Cassia is much cheaper to produce, hence why the supermarkets all carry it and not the other. However, I got a Christmas present of Saigon cinnamon, complete in it’s own little cinnamon wood box. Now that’s a gift to make this baker happy! Another nice feature? It’s from World Vision’s Christmas catalogue, so my gift giver also gave me a beautiful gift reflecting social consciousness. It’s nice to know people know my tastes! Which brings us back to the cookie, as I had to find something to do with that lovely cinnamon. The cinnamon in question has a nice sweet flavor, not a dry taste like so many others have. Perfect for baking. So, you will want to fire up your oven for some great cookies.

Ingredients:

1 ¾ cups all purpose flour

1 tsp. cinnamon

¼ tsp. salt

¾ cup butter or margarine

1/3 cup sugar (Please note, when I made these cookies, I left the white sugar out)

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla

½ cup finely chopped pecans And/Or

¼ cup cinnamon sugar

Stir together flour, cinnamon, and salt. In a large mixer bowl beat butter or margarine till softened. Add sugar (if using) and brown sugar and beat till fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and beat well. Cover and chill about 30 minutes or till easy to handle.

Shape into a 12” roll. Roll in nuts and/or cinnamon sugar to coat. Wrap and chill for at least 2 hours or overnight. Cut into ¼ “ slices. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake in a 350 oven for 10 to 12 minutes or till done. Remove and cool. Makes 48 (although I had less).

What I found with the ¼” thick cookie, was that they were more like shortbread. I would suggest maybe 1/8 “ if you want a crispier cookie, but watch your baking time, they will bake much faster.

References:

Better Homes and Gardens. “Cookies for Christmas.” Des Moines, Iowa: Better Homes and Gardens Books, Meredith Corporation, 1985.

Notes:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon Wikipedia does a decent job of explaining cinnamon, and a very detailed history of the spice throughout history. Quite interesting.

Goldschlager

This will probably be one of the most unusual blogs I’ve done, but hey, it’s Christmas. Somehow the topic, or idea of Goldschlager came into my head this summer, and I was curious to see if it was still available. I had a different name for it, but once we were on the same page, the lady at our local LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) knew exactly what I was looking for. What is Goldschlager? It’s a fascinating Swiss/Italian liquor, or schnapps, to be more precise, with a spicy cinnamon flavor. What makes it so fascinating are the small flakes of pure gold that float in the bottle. Quite pretty actually. Just for the record, gold is completely edible, so there’s nothing toxic about consuming it. In fact, some believe ingesting gold can be good for your health, but who knows. In upscale baking and chocolates, you find gold leaf all the time, and yes, those products decorated with it look absolutely, no questions asked, gorgeous.

The value of the gold in each bottle is negligible, but according to Wikipedia, it was worth €0.56 EUR in November, 2012. That was about $1.23 US or $1.44 CAN at that time, so it gives you an idea that it isn’t a lot of gold. In a 1 litre bottle, that comes to about 13 grams. Metal markets fluctuate widely, so who knows now. It’s more the novelty of actual flakes of gold floating around that seems to fascinate people.

This particular liquor was originally Swiss, but with being bought out by a succession producers, it has vacillated between Switzerland and Italy. The bottle I bought is produced in Italy. I was also surprised that this was not an exorbitant liquor to buy (because of the gold, I thought it would be unaffordable), but as proven above, the amount of gold is quite small. The 750 ml. bottle came to about $30 CAN.

This all being said, what does it actually taste like? Not being a schnapps drinker, I had no idea. Schnapps to me always seemed like something my German ancestors would drink, not me. Very old-fashioned in other words. So what’s the verdict? (Do keep in mind, my tasting panel was small, three in total, and opinions expressed were strictly their own.) As seen in the photo, the liquor is clear.

Taster #1: Cinnamon-y smell with vodka. Rich taste, exactly and overwhelmingly like Fireball, but cleaner, less sweet and sticky. Like a high quality Fireball.

Taster #2: Cinnamon-y smell again, with a rich, smooth taste. Slightly syrupy. Quite nice actually. You can smell and taste the alcohol and cinnamon of course, but seems well balanced.

Taster #3: Nose of vanilla. “Oh, that’s good!” Sweet, but then like candy. Definitely cinnamon, like red hots.

So there you have it, the low down on a semi-mythical liquor that most people hear about but usually don’t try. And those gold flakes? I want to filter them out, then take them to a jeweler to see if you can put them in a little glass bottle to wear as a pendant. Sort of like what tourists do when they pan for gold in Alaska these days.

Wikipedia entry:

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldschlager

LCBO website:

http://www.lcbo.com