Cookie Party

Today was the day my Mom and I bake cookies for Christmas. Behold the butter and margarine. We made peanut butter-chocolate chip-oatmeal cookies, coconut macaroons and the surprise favorite – baklava. We had on our list jelly thumbprint cookies and Greek almond shortbreads. We are not necessarily traditionalists. But after five hours of baking and a small disaster with some semi-sweet morsels we were pooped.

Mr. Loaf has meanwhile returned from Tuscaloosa, Alabama with an armload of German Christmas delicacies from Edelweiss German bakery. Sorry, they have no web site as of right now, but if you're in the area you should stop. Stollen is a holiday bread loaf with bits of nuts and fruit. It's a true bread, not cakey like a banana bread, and theirs has a roll of marzipan baked inside. Another childhood favorite of mine is Lebkuchen. It's a little spicy like gingerbread in flavor, but more like a cake in texture. My Oma always served it as a cake made in a big sheet pan and cut into squares with icing on top. And I think I saw some Springerle in the bunch. It's a crunchy anise-flavored cookie.

Here's a curious thing. Growing up we would eat Butterbrot (butter bread) as a snack or breakfast. It's just butter on any kind of good rye or pumpernickel bread served openface, so I never thought much of it. But in a little Googling, it seems to be a whole category of German cuisine. There are recipes for it and photo galleries. It has even spawned some urban legends, this from Wikipedia:

Butterbrots and their variants are said to always fall to the floor with the top side downwards (see: Murphy's law). A common explanation is that the top side is usually heavier than the bottom side. This applies more to Nutella/jam breads than cheese/meat breads. The subject has been researched by various sources, e.g. the famous children's series Die Sendung mit der Maus, and the scientific TV German series Quarks & Co. It is often joked about what would happen if you tie a butterbrot to the back of a cat, in the same manner that hypothetical buttered toast attached to the back of a cat is sometimes joked about, with it being debated whether the feline would still honour the popular axiom, that a cat "always lands on its feet", or if the butterbrot would be "stronger", making the cat fall on its back - alternatively, it is sometimes humorously suggested that the cat would simply levitate, as it would be unable to satisfy both criteria for landing.

Apparently, there has been somewhat of a decline in the popularity of Butterbrot in Germany in favor of toast or cereals. But never fear, the Central Marketing Society for German Agriculture declares a "day of the German Butterbrot" every September. Long live Butterbrot!