The Twelve Cookies of Christmas-Aunt Martha's Nutmeg Bells

 

The Twelve Cookies of Christmas-Aunt Martha's Nutmeg Bells

Full disclosure: I don't have an Aunt Martha, but somebody out there has an aunt who makes tasty cookies! This is the one I had planned to make last week but the recipe card disappeared on me. I found it this week and even had time to order a bell-shaped cookie cutter to use for the recipe.

I went through so much to make this one happen, it felt right to do them today. I decided to cut the recipe in half because a full batch makes 5 1/2 dozen and I just don't need that much. And again, there was a bit of a disaster I'll get into later, but it all seems to have turned out ok in the end! Well, let's get on with the recipe...

Aunt Martha's Nutmeg Bells(full recipe)

2 cups sugar

1 cup butter, softened

2 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

3 1/2 cups flour

4 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. nutmeg

1.) In large bowl, with mixer at medium speed, beat sugar and butter until creamy, about 2 minutes. Reduce heat to low; beat in eggs and vanilla until blended. Gradually beat in flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg until well blended, occasionally scraping bowl with a rubber spatula.

2.) Divide dough in thirds; flatten each into a disk. Wrap each disk in plastic wrap and refrigerate 2 hours or until dough is firm enough to roll. (Or freeze for 30 minutes.)

3.) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. On lightly floured surface, with floured rolling pin, roll 1 piece of dough 1/8" thick. With floured 3 1/2" bell-shaped cookie cutter, cut dough into as many cookies as possible; wrap and refrigerate trimmings. Place cookies, 1" apart, on ungreased large cookie sheet.

4.) Bake cookies  10-12 minutes or until lightly browned. Transfer cookies to wire rack to cool. Repeat with remaining dough and trimmings.

5.) When cookies are cool, decorate as desired. Store cookies in tightly covered container(with waxed paper between layers if decorated) at room temperature for up to two weeks, or in freezer for up to 3 months.

Makes about 5 1/2 dozen cookies

My obligatory all-ingredient shot before I got started. It's a pretty simple ingredient list.

I did all of this by hand, mostly because I don't feel like lugging my heavy mixer down the hallway from it's storage spot. It doesn't live in the kitchen because there isn't enough counter space for it. So, I have just been doing everything by hand...!

Here it is after adding the egg and vanilla.

I got distracted while mixing the dry ingredients in to get a picture of that. When you're cutting a recipe in half, make sure to look at the measuring spoons very carefully. I accidentally put the full amount of salt in the recipe because I thought I had a 1/2 tsp, but it was a full teaspoon...Luckily it turned out to taste fine, but I would still recommend putting the proper amount in. This is the just-gathered dough, ready to be put in the fridge.

Here's after refrigerating and kneading it all together.

The dough rolls out really well. I rolled it out to what I thought was 1/8" thick and it made way more than 2 3/4 dozen cookies. But that just means you can eat more and feel better about it.

Here are the unbaked cut-outs. It's a decent size cookie.

And right out of the oven. With the thinner cookies, I found 8 minutes was perfect, not 10-12. If yours are thicker, you may need longer.

Towards the end, the cookies got even thinner, so they are a little browner. These are really nice and crunchy, and delicious. I did not decorate them because I'm freezing most of them for later, but my sister thinks they just need a glaze, rather than icing. I'll probably add more nutmeg to the glaze to enhance that flavor.

These were really simple but delicious. On first bite, you're like, yeah, they're fine, but nothing special, but then after a few minutes, you realize you've inhaled five more without realizing it, so there's something about them!! These had a little more work to them with the rolling and cutting, but it wasn't as bad as I anticipated. I will definitely add this to my keeper recipes!

Happy Baking!