Father’s Day: Butter Cookies with 8 Hard Boiled Eggs

Growing up, I knew a lady who seemed ancient when I was little, and who finally died about two years ago, a few weeks shy of her 100th birthday. She was from Germany, and a stern lady with ram-rod straight posture, who never smiled or laughed in all the years I knew her, and yet she was never unkind or ungenerous. Some people just aren’t into levity, I think.

Anyway, anytime I crossed her line of vision she would feed me, rather like an Italian mom. She made heavenly ham/butter/mayo sandwiches and deviled eggs, and I know that’s all supposed to be “bad” food, but she lived to be 100 and was skinny as a rail, eating pork and butter and whipped cream like there was no tomorrow. And she had cake every night. She always said that there were no bad foods unless they were fake foods – packaged, processed, etc – so she ate the vegetables from her garden, along with all that pork, and stayed away from the twinkies, or boxed dessert mixes. Her pudding was homemade; so were her cakes.

About 20 years ago, she gave me this recipe to her astounding butter cookies, insisting that no one else she knew would actually make the things, because America had become so egg-phobic. I gladly took the recipe (and the old-fashioned, screw-down cookie shooter she sent along with them) because they are the most scrumptious butter cookies in the world. They melt in your mouth and leave you cursing anyone who tells you to mind your cholesterol.

I am baking batches of them today, for my neighbor, for a brother-in-law who is difficult to give gifts to, for my husband to take into work. Try them, if you dare. You will thank me. You’ll probably curse at me, too. But you’ll thank me.

Note: DO NOT eat these things while they’re warm. They’re disgusting while they’re warm. Let them completely cool — for a good 30 minutes or so. Then you’ll understand.

ANNA’S GERMAN BUTTER COOKIES

8 hard boiled egg yolks, mashed.
1 lb softened butter
1 cup sugar
1 tsp almond flavoring
4 cups flour (sifted)

Cream butter, adding sugar gradually. Add egg yolks and almond flavor. Add flour slowly, mixing well, but DO NOT OVERKNEAD.

Using a cookie shooter, press onto parchment-lined baking sheet. If you are using a flower-shaped shooter, you can put a smudge of jelly, or a small chocolate morsel or 1/2 a maraschino cherry in the center of each one – but don’t use sprinkles, they just detract from the cookie. Bake at 400 degrees until the edges are JUST brown. Any more than that, and they are overbaked.

Sigh. Really. Sigh.

Related:
My Husband is a Gem, a Jewel!

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com