Sugar Cookies / Plätzchen

Seems like the blogroll is in full-on Thanksgiving-mode today. Happy Thanksgiving to all those of you who celebrate it, I hope you're all spending some quality time with your family and friends! All the festive food I've been seeing has me craving for a hearty meal, no fair. 

Cookie season has officially begun in my kitchen and it started off with a classic: The sugar cookie. The recipe is from my Oma (Grandma) and truly a childhood favourite. We made them multiple times every year  during the holidays and I am so grateful to have something that reminds me of her, as I never got to meet her because she passed away when I was just a baby. Our family doesn't really have a lot of traditions, so I cherish the ones we do have. It is comforting to return to this recipe every year, even if it is a veganised version. The recipe uses ground almonds, but sometimes we'd use ground hazelnuts instead - they're both very tasty, but the almond ones were always my favourite so that's what I'm sticking with now that I'm old enough to rule in my own kitchen. ;)

My Mum wrote down the recipe in 1988, a year before I was born. The page has some stains, but thankfully it's still in readable condition.

Dough pre-rest.

Sugar Cookies / "Butterplätzchen"

Ingredients
1 1/2 cup pastry flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup + 2 tbl margarine
1/2 - 3/4 cup ground almonds
1 tsp Vanilla Extract or 1 tbl vanilla sugar
dash salt

1) Combine all ingredients and knead to a smooth dough. You can do this by hand, but I let my food processor do the work as warm hands can make it hard to work the margarine into the dough.
2) Form dough into a ball, wrap in tinfoil and let it rest in the fridge for at least an hour.
3) Preheat oven to 180° C / 375° F and grease your cookie sheet or line it with parchment paper.
4) Dust some flour onto your workspace and roll the dough out (I like mine thin). You may need to work some extra flour into the dough if it is too soft to work with. Time to use your cookie cutters!
5) Place cookies on baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes.
6) Let cool and decorate with icing or dust some powdered sugar on them while they're still warm. Store in an airtight container.

Done!

Ha, see those wonky lines on that snail (you probably can't tell it's a snail from that photo..)? Yeah, I'm not very good at applying icing.

Mhmmm!

By the way: We had our first snowfall last night. It really feels all Christmas-y now. :)