Cookies for Santa

In Poland, Santa doesn’t come on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning, but on 6^th December – saint Nicholas day. For that reason, 6^th December marks the beginning of Christmas preparations, at least for me. Traditionally, he comes at night and leaves presents under the pillow, though I don’t remember that ever happening in our house. I’m pretty sure it had something to do with Santa not having all the gifts quite figured out on the night on 5^th, which is why he always dropped by on the evening of 6^th. Whatever the reason, the anticipation made the day even more magical…

This year, instead of searching the skies for the reindeer drawn sleigh, we took a road trip with couple of friends, but I couldn’t resist baking few cookies for Santa, just in case…

They are incredibly delicate, buttery, and Christmessy with just enough sweetness and crunch.  Plus… nothing sets the mood better than the evening of aromatic tea, holiday songs and baking!

230-240 g flour

50 g powdered sugar + some for decoration

1 tsp chai masala

170-180 g cold butter

1 egg yolk

Raspberry (or any other) jam 

Quickly mix butter, flour, sugar, spices and egg yolk. You can do it by hand (I did) but it gets quite sticky so I wouldn’t recommend it. Refrigerate for 30-60 minutes.

Sprinkle the working surface with flour and roll the dough with the rolling pin. If it’s too sticky, keep adding small amounts of flour.

Cut stars with the cookie cutter, then cut out smaller stars in half of them. You can roll out the smaller stars and make more big cookies, but I think they look adorable and make the cookie platter more decorative.

Bake 10-12 minutes in 170 degrees and let them cool down on the cooling rack.

Sprinkle the top cookies (the ones with star shaped holes) and half of the little star cookies with powdered sugar. Spread jam on the bottom cookies (the whole stars). Be very careful – cookies are extremely delicate and break easily.

Place the top stars on the bottom stars and refrigerate for an hour or two. Strictly speaking, it isn’t necessary, but it will allow the jam to set and make cookies a bit more stable.