Thomas MacEntee at Geneabloggers is encouraging us to celebrate the 2011 Christmas season with a series of posts called the Advent Calendar of Memories. This is today’s entry.
Did your family or ancestors make Christmas biscuits (cookies)? How did you help? Did you have a favourite biscuit?
I think that the Christmas biscuit treat that wins hands-down is shortbread made with my Scottish grandmother’s recipe. It’s always been part of our Christmas culinary repertoire and even people who say they don’t like sweet things seem to manage quite a few <wink>. I’d guess it’s been a family tradition for something like 80 years by now.
As a child I helped by rubbing the butter into the mix, then learning to push the mix down firmly in the tray. This, too, is a tradition that has been carried on with the children in the family over the years, which means it’s time to teach it to my grandchildren this year now they’re old enough.
A couple of weeks ago while in the library reading a newspaper microfilm (on inter-library loan) I found a Christmas advertisement for the shop owned by my great-great-grandfather. He was a pastry chef and confectioner, trained in Scotland, so the Scotch shortbread he was promoting would have been the real deal.
Now that is the REAL DEAL. What a delightful Christmas ad to find!
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Yes it was fun to find!
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A fantastic find… and I do love shortbread. Funnily enough, I was just shutting down my computer when I saw your post come in. I’m about to make my Greek shortbread or kourabiethes, also a family favourite. 🙂
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Meanwhile I’ve been making Christmas cake (green peppercorn and Cointreau) 🙂 My husband’s aunt used to make the Greek shortbread/kourabiethes. I don’t know where she picked it up from -perhaps another nurse. His family are often thought to be Greek (colouring and name) but in fact are of English descent.
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Wonderful. Sounds like a delicious tradition. The newspaper clipping is a fantastic find!
Thanks for sharing.
http://leavesnbranches.blogspot.com/
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Thanks for dropping by Colleen…somehow your comment ended up in the spam basket hence the delayed response. Yes I love shortbread and have just been snacking on some of my friend’s….different from mine but equally delicious. Happy Christmas! Pauleen
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