Betty’s Refrigerator Cookies

One of my favorite things about the holidays is baking. I enjoy making, eating, and giving away cookies during the holiday season. Our family has our favorites, of course, but there are so many amazing cookie recipes out there!

So if you are in a cookie making rut, or just looking for somethig new to make this year, we are collecting together the best cookie recipes out there! Feel free to poke around, share a recipe if you like, and maybe be inspired to try a new recipe this holiday season!

This hop is being hosted by some pretty awesome women. Take a minute to visit them and check out all the other wonderful ideas they have to make your holidays bright and merry!!

This time of year always reminds me of my grandparents.  They passed away one month, to the day, apart from each other, 10 years ago.  Grandma in November, Grandpa in December.  It was a really, really hard Christmas for me (and my family).  Not only did some of my favorite people pass away, but we miscarried at the same time.  In fact, the day before Grandpa’s funeral.  We always spent Christmas Eve at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, and that was the first year that we did not do that, and we all missed them so much.  Baking was therapeutic for me that year, and making Grandma’s cookie recipes made me cry happy tears that year.

Sometime between November and December, I begin doing my Christmas baking.  I’ve scaled back significantly in the past few years, but there are some recipes that I just HAVE to make for Christmas each year… if for no one else but me.  One of my all-time favorites?  My grandma’s refrigerator cookies!  She didn’t do a lot of baking for the holidays when I was growing up, probably because between my family and my cousins, we baked enough to feed an army!  But there were a couple of recipes she did make every year, and I was even blessed enough to make each recipe with her at least once.  She always made gingerbread cookies that I absolutely loved, and if you tell me that they need to be made differently, while you might be right for you, you’d be so very wrong for me 🙂  I loved her fluffy, subtle gingerbread and the simple icing she’d put on the cookies.  And she would always make these refrigerator cookies as well.  At some point, in the last couple of years before she passed away, I think she stopped making any cookies, so my mom and I took up the torch.  And now I have to for myself and my brother (who also happens to love these).

Betty’s Refrigerator Cookies

• 1 lb. butter (softened)
• 3 eggs
• 1 c. brown sugar
• 1 c. white sugar
• 2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 4 1/2 c. flour
• 1 cup slivered almonds (or nut of your choosing… more on that later)

Directions:

Mix butter, sugar, eggs, cinnamon, and baking soda well.  Add flour, 1 cup at a time.  Then add 1/2 c. remaining flour and all of the almonds.  Roll the dough into 4 logs on a floured surface.  The diameter of the log determines the size of your cookie.  Roll dough up into waxed paper or saran wrap.  Refrigerate for at least 6 hours.  (You can freeze the dough shortly, but don’t freeze fully… they’ll break apart or be too hard to cut up.)  Slice dough into 1/4″ slices.  Bake on greased cookie sheet at 350F until lightly browned (about 10 minutes).  *Use a sharp knife to cut.

Mix all ingredients but the flour and almonds together (this picture, I’m missing the butter… add the butter before you begin mixing so it incorporates nicely.

Incorporate the flour and almonds (or other nut) last.

The fully mixed dough.

Roll 1/4 of the dough into a log at a time.

Roll log into a piece of waxed paper. I always cut mine much longer than needed.

After rolling up your logs, place in refrigerator for at least 6 hours.

Cut the dough rolls into slices that are roughly 1/4-3/8″.

I usually cut an entire log at a time.

Unwrap the dough from the waxed paper. I didn’t roll my logs on a floured surface this time, but normally they’ll look pretty white if you have.

These cookies don’t last long around here!

It’s a pretty easy recipe to make.  If they are a little bit over baked, they still taste great dunked in hot cocoa (they taste great like that either way)!  Awhile ago, I wrote  about how we were cracking black walnut hulls, and would eventually be cracking the shells to get the nut meat out.  A reader on Facebook said that they liked to make Black Walnut Cookies.  When I asked about the recipe, I realized it was a very similar refrigerator cookie recipe to the one my grandma used, and they recommended using whatever type of nut you want.  It had never occurred to me to use black walnuts in the cookies, so I will most definitely be trying the recipe with our black walnuts once I have enough shelled!  What’s your favorite cookie recipe?

Happy Baking!

Love~Danielle