St. Nicholas Day Cookies

My friend, Liz, gave me my first St. Nicholas Day cookie on Sunday.

St. Nicholas Day is actually today--Tuesday--but she had baked a batch of cookies over the weekend for her grandchildren, one of whom is named Nicholas, and for a few special friends like me. When she saw that I've recently launched Foodphiles, she wrote me to tell me about the cookies. Then she brought me a cookie at church on Sunday.

Liz said that she first baked the cookies twenty five years ago when her daughter was in high school. She explained that you make St. Nicholas cookies, which closely resemble soft gingerbread cookies, by pressing the dough into a mold of St. Nicholas. She told me that her first mold was made of wood and did not give enough shape to the cookies to make it through baking in the oven. She said they used to come out looking like a warped St. Nick.

Then she got a glass mold that allowed her to pack in more dough to hold their shape in the oven. The cookie Liz gave me was beautiful.



St. Nicholas is the patron saint of children, sailors and unmarried women (hmmm, what do those things have in common?), so I was going to give the cookie to two of Lou's friend who have just had a baby, but because he's been sick and we weren't able to see them tonight, I'll probably eat the cookie myself. I'll do so, however, in honor of some of the important little kids in my life: Gretchen Riffe, Nicholas Brouwer, and Emma and Kate Spencer.

Happy St. Nicholas Day!