Pennsylvania Dutch tradition: Crunchy sand cookies for the holidays

Looking for inspiration for your holiday butter cookies? Here's a delightful cookie recipe that has been adored in the northeastern part of the United States, known as sand cookies. This regional delicacy has been handed down from generation to generation, creating delicious memories.

A recipe for holiday sand cookies, over 200 years old, has been circulating online for several years, originating from a Reddit post. The author of the post revealed that the recipe for these treasured holiday cookies has been passed down in his family for generations. The ingredients of these cookies are simply flour, butter, sugar, eggs. However, the secret to their unique taste lies in their distinctiveness of being very thin.

These cookies are fondly called Pennsylvania Dutch sand tart cookies in the United States. They were introduced by the Dutch settlers of Pennsylvania, a group with roots tracing back to Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, Saxony, and Rhine in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the French regions of Alsace and Lorraine.

Sand cookies are known for their extreme crunchiness and are traditionally lightly sprinkled with colored sugar, or decorated with sliced or whole almonds. These unique cookies differ from the usual sand cookies in their shape, renowned for their thinness.

Ingredients:

• 4 cups of sifted all-purpose flour,
• 1 cup of soft butter (around 10.5 oz),
• 2 and 1/4 cups of sugar,
• 4 eggs,
• Colored sugar or almond flakes for decoration.

Preparation:

1. Begin by kneading dough from the flour and butter.
2. Separate two full eggs and two yolks from the egg whites. Beat the eggs and yolks with sugar. Add this mixture to the prepared dough, knead it well, shape it into a ball, cover and refrigerate, ideally overnight.
3. The next day, roll out the dough into the thinnest sheet possible.
4. Use your favorite cookie cutters to cut desired shapes from the dough.
5. Beat the remaining 2 egg whites until stiff peaks form.
6. Arrange the cookies on a baking tray. Brush them with the stiff egg whites and sprinkle with either sugar or almond flakes for decoration.
7. Bake the cookies in an oven preheated to 350 degrees F for 9-10 minutes. Be cautious not to let the cookies brown.
8. Once done, take them out of the oven and let them cool after taking them off the hot baking sheet. Enjoy your deliciously thin and crunchy holiday cookies!