12 DAYS OF COOKIES: BUTTERY CHOCOLATE THUMBPRINTS
All the cookies you need for your Christmas Cookie tins: Bite-sized, fudgy chocolate-and-currant treats. A taste of Germany, and The Nutcracker.
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Hello!
It is a blockbuster week here! On top of our week full of mouthwatering European cookies, my daughter, Greta, returned to the stage in The Nutcracker after a long hiatus.
In pre-Covid times, Nutcracker was her ultimate—and also mine. As a child, my dad would take my mom, sisters, little brother, and me downtown to the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago every Christmas to watch the dancers light up the stage. We would dress in velvet dresses with lace collars and wide satin sashes, walk in the bitter cold from a fancy dinner, and slide into our seats—bellies plump full of pasta and pastry—right before show time. I remember the whip of the wind off of Lake Michigan blowing right through our tights, the sounds of the orchestra warming up below us, and the electricity in the air the moment the giant velvet curtain opened. MAGIC.
I now know it was a stretch (financial and emotional) for my parents to pull that outing off year after year with four young kids. Still, Dad would splurge on second or third-row seats, and I can still feel the rush of watching those dancers bound across the stage to the sound of Tchaikovsky’s Kingdom of Sweets. It was everything.
The ballet school I danced in growing up wasn’t robust enough to produce a full-scale ballet performance; I never got the chance to dance The Nutcracker (and let’s be real—I’m better at baking than ballet). But being backstage now as a ballet mom, watching my daughter grow from a tiny reindeer pulling Clara in a sleigh to a tin soldier to a pink-cheeked little maid and this year—as head Chef (after a two-year pause for Covid and our travels to Hungary) is a thrill. She is the only one on stage when the curtain opens in the show's second half, and that same feeling returns when I watch her there: goosebumps, heart thumping, and tears (I haven’t gotten through a single show this week without crying!)
The irony that she plays the chef isn’t lost on me. It’s a fun, animated roll that opens the Kingdom of Sweets: from Hot Chocolate to Marzipan and, of course, the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
About today’s cookie, it’s a good one!!
Today, in our cookie travels, we visit Germany (ish). I’ve been dreaming of the Black Forrest, German Christmas markets, and Black Forrest-esque Holiday for years, but this year, especially so. This fall, while heavy-hitting a buttery sourdough toast with a dollop of cherry jam, I got the idea to see what the same sour-cherry jam felt like in the center of a cocoa cookie—one with enough of a fudgy core to hit all the Christmas notes.
When I made them, they were good—memorable even. But the cherry overpowered the cookie's fudginess, which makes this particular cookie irresistible. So we tried again, this time with currant jam. With one tweak, they became a poppable, delicate bit of European Christmas and possibly my favorite Christmas cookie ever.
These cookies are the taste of the Nutcracker—and Christmas— to me.
While these aren’t strictly speaking German cookies (I tweaked my old favorite butter thumbprint, generally rooted in Sweden, adding Dutch cocoa), this flavor combination feels right at home in Central Europe. We lean hard into currants in Hungary (where they are called ribizli) and Germany (called Johannisbeere). You’ll find heaps of them in the markets in late July and early August when we visit and when their tart flavor is best captured inside the region’s luscious jams.
It was only today, after we wrapped Greta’s first performance of The Nutcracker (one done—three more to go this weekend!) that it occurred to me that these cookies are the taste of the Nutcracker—and Christmas— to me. It’s a fitting connection since the story of the Nutcracker ballet comes from the German fairy tale Nussknacker und Mausekonig (The Nutcracker and the Mouse King) written by E.T.A. Hoffmann in 1816. Nutcracker dolls originated in the Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge) region of Germany in the late 17th century (more Nutcracker history, here).
A final note: I almost didn’t send you this recipe because I don’t have a great shot of the finished cookies (our official cookie shoot was canceled due to a snow day!), but I hope you won’t let that stop you from making these irresistible little gems.
xx
Sarah
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BUTTERY CHOCOLATE CURRANT THUMBPRINT COOKIES