Saturday, December 16, 2017

Egyptian Christmas Cookies Along With Danish!

Are you getting ready for my favorite time of Year?  I've had a great couple of days spending time in my kitchen and baking my favorite Christmas cookies.

First on the list were my Egyptian petit fours.  I tweeked the recipe a bit and made them in single cookies without any filling.  And, I just had to add some green Christmas trees.  Every year my Danish grandma would make "spritz" cookies in the shape of green Christmas trees.  I have kept the same tradition for my family. If you want the recipe, you can find it here on my blog from a few years ago.  Remember, the key to this recipe is using clarified butter and powdered sugar which gives this cookie it's unique texture :)

Another popular Egyptian holiday cookie is Uraybee* or Ghorayebah* or as it's known in turkey, Kurabiyesi.  I bought this mix in Turkey and brought it home with me.  Luckily, it had only two ingredients I had to "translate" and again I used clarified butter and oil. (My oil looks green because it's grapeseed oil!)  The cookies came out perfect!  I'm sold on this cookie mix and plan to buy it again.  Kurabiyesi is a rich, buttery, shortbread type cookie with a very fine texture.  My favorite - yum!

Now, we're going to head back to Denmark and here's my pebernodder (peppernuts) that I made this year.  Again, this is one of my Grandma's recipes and I just had to make them since my brother will be joining us for the holidays and he loves these as much as I do!  You can find the recipe here from a previous blog post.  Remember, you need to prepare the dough the night before so that it can ripen  the wonderful, spicy flavor. I love to pop them in my mouth, savor the flavor a minute or two before I bite into this delicious crunchiness.

 
Today I made my Danish Kleiner.  It seems that every culture has their own favorite fried cookie and this is our family's tradition from Denmark.  Again, it's my Grandma's recipe that I treasure.  Hopefully, I can pass this onto my little granddaughter so that she can make them one day.  They will be put away in an air tight tin and wait the arrival of my son since this is his favorite cookie.

Four down and one more cookie to make.  Tomorrow I hope to make some plain, old, much loved, chocolate chip cookies but with a twist using Nestle's Holiday Baking Chips.  Don't you just love how colorful these are?  I'm using my dear friend Elizabeth's recipe which you can find here.

What are you baking?  If you would like to share, please feel free in the comments below.  That's  about all that is happening here at Lilly My Cat.  I hope to share another post soon.

Blessings to everyone,

Pat 

PS *the Arabic language can be hard sometimes to translate into the Latin alphabet since there is no standardized translation.  But, you can google this cookie and see what you come up with since it's a popular cookie for all the countries in the Middle East. 

13 comments:

  1. Your cookies sound delicious. I've been cooking too, chocolate chip cookies, gingerbread men and sugar cookies tomorrow.

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  2. My goodness you have been busy, your kitchen must have smelt amazing.

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  3. Now I want to bake all the cookies!!

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  4. so nice!! (I hope you like the ones from my blog!) :) baking is such a treat, isn't it!!! God bless!

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  5. delicious! I decided not to bake because of the kitty and limited time, however I went to the local bakery and gave them my business!!

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  6. I tried making my Speculaas cookies this week and it was a disaster! In fact, I saved you a ball of dough. Hopefully Sadie will inherit your cookie baking genes. They skipped me! (Tony is excited about the chocolate chip cookies but wants to make sure Andrew knows who they're for).

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  7. Wow, you've been busy. I particularly like the look of your little green Christmas trees. Jx

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  8. They all sound wonderful. I have been busy with life stuff but I'm back on line now and I'm wishing you the Merriest of Christmas' and Blessings for the New Year.

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  9. Wow, these all sound lovely....if rather calorific! Its ages since I made biscuits of any kind other than a few chewy cookies with my granddaughter.

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  10. How fun to look through your pictures and the recipes you linked to. I have a real urge to make some Christmas cookies now!

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  11. I think it’s so wonderful that you have recipes passed down through your family, how precious to be able to pass them to your granddaughter xx

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  12. It's a good thing to pass on your cooking traditions to your granddaughter as we do ourselves with English and Italian recipes. Wishing you a very blessed Christmas.

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  13. I just wrote a blog post for this Christmas on peppernuts! Do you know about the little book that was written just to collect different recipes for them? Yours looks much more convenient than the one I devised so long ago and rarely make anymore. I love the Trader Joe's Pfeffernusse at this time of year -- but they are only a distant cousin to peppernuts, and do not satisfy the longing. :-)

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