Merry Christmas, friends!

An easy seasonal cookie recipe and warm holiday thoughts...

And here it is, another Christmas. My favourite holiday and time of year.

One of my Christmas traditions — along with not decorating the tree until 24th December - is making my grandmother’s walnut acorn Christmas cookies. They have been served in my mother’s family’s Christmas feasts for as long as I can remember, and I think they may have been our matriarch’s own creation. I am number 4 of 17 or 18 cousins, and us older ones grew up calling our grandmother Memo. Her actual name was Dorothea, called Dot, and she grew up in the Bronx before marrying and leaving the city to raise 10 children in the woods on the New York-New Jersey border. She was a masterful baker and cook, as well as a warm comfort to her children and grandchildren.

Once my grandmother got too old to bake them herself, they were then taken over by an aunt and a cousin and an uncle who were also all professional bakers. Every year they brought delight.

Since I’m a long way from my Rockland County, New York family, I make my own walnut acorns now. And even though mine come out, shall we say… rustic compared to the excellence of the ones created by my ultra-talented relatives, they are a big hit every year with the Irish contingent, and I usually make enough to give away as gifts.

They are so easy to make. So, so, SO easy. I have clumsy hands and these require no finesse whatsoever. Nor do they require any equipment — though a food processor would be handy to chop up all the walnuts.

Here they are.

Memo’s Walnut Acorns.

Preheat oven to 350F/175C

In a medium saucepan over low heat, melt together:

8 ounces (2sticks) butter

3/4 cup brown sugar (packed)

Whisk over heat until smooth. Remove from the heat and let cool for 10 minutes.

Add:

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine and then stir into butter mixture:

2 1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder 

3 ounces (3/4 cup) finely chopped walnuts

Mold a heaping mound of dough onto a soup spoon and press the dough firmly with your palm to form a rounded "acorn" shape. Gently slide onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (or greased). Repeat for remaining dough- spacing them 1-inch apart.

Bake for 10-15 minutes or until undersides are lightly browned- do not overbake. 

Let the cookies cool for 5 minutes in their pan then transfer to a wire rack.

Melt 12 ounces semisweet chocolate.

Finely chop 1 cup walnuts.

Dip half of cookie in chocolate then nuts. Arrange on parchment to set.

While I make these, I listen to a Spotify Christmas playlist that I made three years ago that is, if I may say so myself, a bloody great Christmas playlist. Please enjoy it!

I hope you all will enjoy some iteration of a Christmas break — whether or not the day itself is meaningful.

Thank you all for your support this year, I feel like together we have created a corner of the Internet where sanity mostly reigns.