Christmas Traditions: Santa Cookies

A PLATE OF OUR FAMILY SANTA COOKIES!

 

Best Birthday cake set ever!  Loved this book,
would look at it for hours trying to pick a cake.

I am not sure how this tradition started.  I asked my mother where she found the design for the cookies and she can't remember.  I believe it was in a magazine.  When I was little my mother had her fingers in all kinds of pies.  She painted with oils and watercolor.  She built elaborate Gingerbread towns and she made wedding cakes, which then transferred over to birthday cakes.  I had some fabulous cakes.  I still remember when she made the "Three little Pigs", the Wolf and their straw house.  The cakes were very professional looking.  I found a picture of the design.  In an ironic twist our oven broke on my next birthday and my mother had to scramble.  My cake was made of various Hostess cake treats i.e. snowballs, cupcakes and Twinkies, it was a bit of a let down after the year before, but I survived.

So, the Santa cookies were a natural extension of her talents.  I globed onto them because they were easy.  Now I know that is a relative term, easy.  We would make Christmas sugar cookies every year and my younger brother and I would try to use every single cookie cutter.  No plan, but Mom would just cut out her one shape, which did not seem right to me.  After the cookies were baked came the decorating. 

Decorating cookies is hard. 

I did not like my child-like crocked lines.  I wanted my cookies to look like the cookies in the magazine.  Just because I was 5 years old was no excuse.  I wanted straight lines.  I wanted smooth frosting.  I wanted the Angels wings to sparkle and the candy canes to be red and white.  It was really hard and I gave up, luckily they still tasted fantastic, so I never got too frustrated.

Later in my twenties I finally learned how to get the perfect cookie design and I was grateful for my mother's Santa cookies because I did not want to go through what Martha Stewart was telling to do to get the frosting just right plus I am not a fan of how Royal icing taste and that was the frosting you had to use.

I figure this tradition is going to disappear because only my mother and I know how to do the cookies.  So for this blog I am showing how to decorate our very Special Santa cookies.  Mom was quite incensed when I told her I was going to do this, but I figure family can print these instructions out and maybe the tradition will continue.

You will need-

Favorite Sugar cookie recipe cut into Hearts (any shape heart will work, but it should not be too small)

Favorite Frosting recipe set aside a small amount to make into red for hats( make sure you have red food coloring)

Star Tip and a bag to pipe white frosting

Round Red Hots for Santa's nose

Chocolate chips for Eyes(you can also use mini M & M's)

 

Turn the heart upside down and put a triangle of red frosting.

Pipe a dot on the top point of the heart for the puff ball of his hat and then run the tip across the bottom of the triangle for the fur trim of Santa's hat.

 

Next follow the shape of the heart with stars to form his beard.  Do an extra tall spot in the middle for his nose.  Then fill in the checks with two or three stars.  Add two stars under the white hat trim for his eyes.

Place the red hots for his nose and the chips for eyes.

You are done!

For how cute these cookies are the effort is well worth it.  And of course, they taste great too!  We used to ding- dong ditch our creations through our friends.  I miss those times.

Merry Christmas to everyone and Happy Holidays.  Our traditions make us who we are, whether we know it or not.