Before my daughter went back to college after Thanksgiving, she made the spice Christmas cookies from her German great-grandmother, my grandmother, to take with her. Yesterday, my son, away at grad school, asked for that same recipe. Those particular cookies, like no others, evokes the taste of Christmas for us. They conjure up visions of sugar plums so to speak, or rather the flavors of German Christmas.
Cocoa powder makes the cookies deep dark brown, they are covered with white powdered sugar glazing, and they combine the chocolaty aroma of the cocoa with the intense spice tastes of cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
my grandmother’s German spice cookies
In his famous madeleine episode Proust describes how eating the cake spontaneously resurrects childhood memories from somewhere deep down in his subconscious.
For me my grandma’s spice cookies evoke not only the taste of Christmas but also memories of her; for my children, who did not get to know her, these cookies have become the most evocative of all Christmas tastes. Now that they are older, they both make the cookies themselves to travel back memory lane to their younger selves and earlier Christmases.
What is your madeleine? What memories does it bring back in you?