Finally, the St. Nicholas Cookies!

You may have remembered my post about St. Nicholas' day and the special handcarved wooden mold I bought.

Well, I finally put it to use with my former neighbor's special St. Nicholas cookie recipe. When I was younger, she would bring over these cookies that were made in a special mold.

This year, I made her cookies which have a distinct flavor because of the spices- most notably cardamom. I must confess that I am still working this recipe out and it does have a variable addition of flour. The first time I made it, the dough was fairly firm and the cookies turned out fairly thick.

It is important the dough not be too soft as it needs to hold the shape and fine details but still release from the mold. Additionally, this recipe has no leavening in it, which is suspect also helps keep shape. I recall these cookies being thick as a child and I was worried that they were undercooked so....I accidentally overbaked them.

They looked great but the next day, they were hard as rock. I couldn't even take a bite.


So, I made them again and I didn't put as much flour so the dough was a bit softer. I intended for the dough to spread more with the force of pressing the mold which would result in thinner cookies. What actually happened is that they didn't keep the fine details after baking and they stuck to the mold! However, the taste and texture were about right.

You can see the cookies...the two overbaked ones are on the left and the less baked one that lost definition on the right. I also recall that my neighbor's cookies were also somewhat pale and not overly brown.

So, for next year, I should probably talk to my neighbor about the recipe a bit more. I think I might bake the dough again, using the higher amount of flour and erring on the side of underbaking rather than over.