EDIBLE NOSTALGIA

It began every December with a sausage grinder. Fitted with the smallest plate, the aluminum grinder was brought out and dusted off, clamped to the slab table, and a small bowl was fitted beneath the grinder plate. Instead of meat, however, we ground whole, shelled almonds. Pounds and pounds of them, reduced to a meal of such a particular, fine texture that there was no option but to grind it ourselves. The children, hungry to participate, were often given the task of grinding the nuts, though doubtless we hindered as much as we helped. Still, it was Tradition, and we longed to be a part of it.

Growing up, we had few formal traditions; unmoored from the structures of church and town life, we existed mainly in a small, rich world of forest and family. One of the few traditions we kept was making several kinds of German Christmas cookies. There were hazelnut meringue cookies, lemon bars, sprinkle sugar cookies and pecan crescents, but the most beloved and anticipated cookies were the spitzbuben; a pair of buttery almond cookies, with a layer of jam sandwiched in the middle and a dusting of powdered sugar on the top.

Roughly translated, the name spitzbuben means naughty or mischievous boy; these cookies are so good that a mischievous boy (or girl) can hardly resist stealing them from the tins. In Switzerland, the reference to a naughty boy is sometimes enhanced by using a different cookie cutter for the top, with a trio of round holes suggesting a face. But we entertained no such practice in our home. Spitzbuben were cut from the buttery dough with nothing other than a crystal shot glass, the same cutter for top and bottom, and they had to be filled with a tart, seeded raspberry jam. As I grew older and began to make these cookies on my own, I realized the ways in which our own recipe diverged from staunch tradition, and how transmutable a secret, beloved family tradition might, in fact, be. My mother always cautioned that her recipe be kept secret; it was a particular fear of her own mother, that the recipe might be discovered and thereby cheapened by commercial production, à la Nabisco. But her spitzbuben were so beloved by friends and family that the demands of making a tin of cookies for every family that desired them became expensive, time consuming, and exhausting. So the recipe was shared with those who could be trusted to keep it secret, as a kind of self-preservation. I imagine

EDIBLE NOSTALGIA the ghosts of grandmothers past, hovering over the mixing bowl, shushing and tsking the looseSPITZBUBEN lipped generations. They might have comforted themselves, however, with know-

In which a beloved heirloom recipe may ing how particular the dough or may not be revealed was, and how vulnerable to the vagaries of oven heat, brand of PHOTOS AND STORY BY JESSICA TUNIS butter, temperature of the dough and myriad other variables that made these cookies our own. Every baker has discovered that their cookies have turned out a just a little bit different. And of course, every baker considers theirs to be the best. Red currant jelly was the original approved filling for these cookies in our family, the recipe brought to New York in 1931 by my grandmother Anneliese, who had inherited it from a long line of German mothers and grandmothers before her. She carried the recipe in her mother’s handwritten recipe book, written in a flowing, flowery German script. However, red currant jelly was hard to find in Yonkers, so red raspberry was substituted, and thereby became the standard. When my mother left home for California in the early ’60s, she took this recipe with her, making the cookies first in an apartment in

She carried the recipe in her mother’s handwritten recipe book, written in a flowing, flowery German script.

San Francisco and later in the small one-room cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which would expand to become our family home in years to come. When she went in search of raspberry jelly, however, all the local grocery store stocked was a seeded raspberry jam. And so began her own tradition. Anneliese did not approve, claiming the seeds were a distraction, and the cookies too firm, somehow.

I have continued to use seeded raspberry jam in my own version of these cookies and follow my mother’s recipe faithfully. The seeds are a crucial part of the recipe; I missed their texture one year when we used seedless jelly. The actual ingredients are few: ground almonds, sugar, butter, jam and powdered sugar to top it off. But our cookies are substantially different, to the discerning cookie-eater, in taste and texture. A friend’s generous gift last year of several pounds of Kerrygold butter (not my usual brand) dramatically changed the flavor of the dough. It was excellent! But somehow…off. Not the usual profile.

This is a tender dough, almost shortbread-like in its richness. As such, the butter must be kept cold, and the dough chilled between rolling. My own practice has been to use frozen butter, and grate it into the dough with a cheese grater, which makes mixing easier. But my mother scoffs at this innovation, preferring to cream the fridge-hard butter and sugar with a wooden spoon. However it is mixed, the dough is temperamental; it does not like to be handled more than necessary, or it becomes tough. On warm days, it must be refrigerated between repeated rolling out. The oven also plays a subtle role in how the cookies turned out; even when my mother lived for a while in another town, she’d come back up to her old mountaintop Wedgewood oven to make these cookies. “They’re just not the same in another oven,” she remarked, and she was right.

The Internet has stolen many secrets from us; places and stories and recipes that were once closely guarded knowledge are now free to anyone who can use a search bar. There are several recipes available online these days for spitzbuben. None of them, however, is my family’s exact iteration. And so, in deference to the ghosts of all my maternal grandmothers, I offer up not our own beloved recipe, but a close facsimile. I compiled it from several online versions and tested it for you. It makes a damn fine cookie, even if it isn’t exactly like mine, or my mother’s, or my grandmother’s. When you make it, it will become exactly your own, part of a long line of changing, eternal tradition and evolution.

Jessica Tunis lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains and spends her time tending gardens, telling stories and cultivating adventure and good food in wild places.

Spitzbuben

Courtesy Jessica Tunis

1¼ cups cold butter, cut into small pieces 1 cup sugar 1 teaspoon almond extract 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 cups flour, sifted, plus more for rolling out 1½ cups ground almonds 10 ounces tart jam, such as raspberry or red currant About 1½ cups powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 375° F. Grease 4 cookie sheets lightly with butter.

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar together until smooth. Add the almond extract and vanilla extract and stir.

Sift the flour onto the butter and sugar mixture and stir to combine. Add the ground almonds and mix just until well combined.

Divide the dough in half and shape it into disks. Allow disks to chill in the refrigerator for 10 minutes.

Dust a flat surface lightly with flour. Roll the chilled dough out evenly onto the floured surface, using a floured rolling pin. Roll out to ¼-inch thick, or slightly thinner.

Using a 1-inch in diameter round cutter, cut the dough into small round cookies. It’s helpful to dip the cutter in flour every few cuts, since this dough can be sticky.

Using a thin metal spatula, lift the cookies onto the greased cookie sheets, spacing them ½ inch apart. Bake in the oven at 375° F for 10 minutes or until golden.

Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheets for 3 minutes, then transfer them individually with a spatula to a cool work surface.

Dollop a teaspoon of jam onto half of the still-warm cookies. Choose the prettiest, roundest cookies to be the tops, and place them on top of the jam to make a sandwich.

While the cookies are still somewhat warm, sift powdered sugar over the tops of the finished jam sandwiches. (The sugar won’t stick as well if they are allowed to cool, so work in batches while the next sheets of cookies cool, rather than all at once.)

Once thoroughly cool, store the cookies in airtight tins, between layers of wax paper. Makes about 30 cookies.