Ingredients

2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 cups butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Method

Sift flour, baking powder and
salt into a bowl. Mix butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla in a separate bowl until creamy and blend into the flour mixture. Refrigerate two hours or until the dough is chilled and can be handled easily for rolling. On a floured surface, roll out cookie dough and cut. Grease cookie sheet and bake at 350F between 7 and 10 minutes, depending on the thickness they are rolled to. Decorate as desired.

From Executive Chef Meredith Adams

Eurasia Café & Wine Bar, Virginia Beach

www.eurasiavb.com

Hometown:
Snow Hill, N.C.

Fave childhood cookies:
Pecan shortbread, sugar cookies, soft milk chocolate chip cookies

“[My favorite holiday cookie memories is] as a family sitting at our bar in the kitchen, watching my sister making cookies and laughing at my mom while she scolds my dad for ‘supervising’ her cookie-making skills. This has been going on for 25 years—it is quite funny and never changes. My mother, Pat Adams, added, ‘Some of my best childhood memories are making cookies and decorating them. I used to think the two hours waiting for the dough to get chilled was the longest time in the world. Mama would always make lots of cookies and share them with friends. My recipe card says I got this [recipe below] and wrote it down from Grandma on Nov. 26, 1978.”

I picked this recipe because I think that decorating cookies together really brings people closer, and that’s what holidays are for, even if it’s only for a brief time. Making a tradition such as this is a building block of wonderful memories. [This is] an ode to my grandmother, who turned 80 in November; she’s made a few cookies in her day!

Ingredients

1-1/2 cups sugar

1 cup butter or margarine, softened

2 large eggs

4–5 tablespoons whole milk

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon anise oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 cups all-purpose flour

Method

Cream the sugar and butter by hand; add eggs and stir; add milk and anise oil and stir; then add flour, baking soda and salt all together and stir until the batter becomes soft and sticky. Refrigerate overnight. On a generously floured surface, roll dough out to a little less than 1/8-inch thick. Bake on a cookie sheet at 350ºF for between 8 and 10 minutes or until golden. Frost with a confectionary glaze and decorate as you wish.

From Executive Chef/Owner Jerry Weihbrecht
Zoe’s, Virginia Beach, www.zoesvb.com

Hometown:
Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

Fave childhood cookies:
Icebox cookies, snowballs,
chocolate chip, peanut butter

“My mother would bake tons of cookies for Christmas and then would storethem in the attic where it was much cooler, so all season long there would be pans of cookies up there, taunting us with their deliciousness. Anytime guests would come over we would get to go up and fill up the cookie tray—in addition to as much as we could gorge ourselves on before getting caught.”
As a child I wasn’t very fond of these cookies but all the adults were. As I got older I started to like them more and more I think partly because they remind me of being a child and how tastes change as you grow.