French Christmas Cookies

Bill's Christmas card arrived Tuesday and I read it at the kitchen table with my second coffee, the good slow read that a handwritten letter deserves. He has been planning his first maple tapping for this coming March — he told me in October he was going to try it and has apparently spent the fall researching equipment and talking to a farmer neighbor who has been doing it for thirty years. He has eight sugar maples on his property in Maine that he believes are large enough, and he has ordered the taps and the collection buckets and a small evaporating pan. He is not aiming for commercial scale; he just wants to make his own syrup once before he decides he is too old to do hard things. I wrote back and told him that attitude was exactly correct and that he should call me in March when it starts and I would walk him through it.

The second Saturday of cookie baking covered the butter cookies and the molasses crinkles. The butter cookies are simple and forgiving — a good butter, icing sugar, a little almond extract, rolled and cut into whatever shapes the household contains cutters for. Mine are all classic: trees, stars, bells, and a moose cutter that Sarah bought at a Vermont gift shop in 1998 and that has appeared on my cookie sheets ever since. The molasses crinkles I bake for myself mostly — dark and spiced with ginger, clove, and black pepper, rolled in sugar before going in, coming out cracked on top with a chewiness in the center. They are not beautiful. They taste of December.

I posted a short piece about holiday cookie traditions this week and asked readers what they bake and why. The thread ran to sixty-some comments and I read all of them, which took an hour. What struck me was the pattern: nearly everyone named a recipe connected to a person rather than a cookbook. The recipe was always secondary to who taught it. The recipe was a container for the person. I have known this in a general way for years but reading sixty different examples of it in one thread made it vivid in a new way. Every one of those cookies was someone's grandmother or mother or aunt or neighbor who is now gone, and every December the baker brings them back briefly at the counter.

Reading back through those sixty comments — all those grandmothers and neighbors conjured at the counter every December — I found myself reaching for a recipe that felt similarly unhurried and intentional, the kind of cookie that asks you to slow down and be present in the making of it. These French Christmas Cookies are exactly that: simple enough to feel familiar, refined enough to feel like an occasion. They belong on the same tray as the molasses crinkles, and they would not be out of place in any one of those sixty traditions people wrote in about.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 12 minutes | Total Time: 32 minutes (plus 1 hour chilling) | Servings: 36 cookies

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
2/3 cup powdered sugar, sifted, plus more for dusting
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 cup finely ground blanched almonds
Zest of 1 orange
1/4 cup finely chopped dried cranberries (optional, for color)

Instructions

Cream the butter and sugar. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter and powdered sugar together with a hand mixer or stand mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
Add the wet ingredients. Mix in the egg yolk, vanilla extract, and almond extract until fully incorporated and smooth.
Combine dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, sea salt, and ground almonds. Add the orange zest and stir to distribute.
Bring the dough together. Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture in two additions, mixing on low speed just until the dough comes together. If using dried cranberries, fold them in now. Do not overmix.
Chill the dough. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and shape into a flat disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or up to overnight. Cold dough holds its shape when cut.
Preheat and prepare. When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Roll and cut. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough to about 1/4-inch thickness. Cut into shapes using your preferred cookie cutters — stars, trees, bells, or whatever your collection holds. Transfer to the prepared baking sheets, spacing about 1 inch apart.
Bake. Bake for 10–12 minutes, until the edges are just barely golden and the centers look set but not browned. These cookies should stay pale. Rotate the pans halfway through baking.
Cool and finish. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Once fully cooled, dust generously with powdered sugar through a fine-mesh sieve.

Nutrition (per serving)

French Christmas Cookies — The Recipe Is Always a Container for the Person