Sand tarts

12/21

Sand tarts

Sand tarts ready to eat

Christmas cookies were always a major part of our holiday season.   There  were many varieties, each baked and put in their own box. But of all the various cookies, the most important, the ur cookie as it were, was the sand tart. Thin and crisp, golden brown, dusted with cinnamon…a simple decoration of nut or red or green maraschino cherry or candied pineapple.  Baked to perfection.  

They go back to my grandmother in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania.  Apparently brought to Pennsylvania by the Amish and Mennnonites, my son in Berlin tells me they’re a common German cookie.  Our recipe seems to come from the cookbook made by the Huntingdon County Society for Crippled Children and Adults, where many of our family favorites are found. Circa 1950’s I’m guessing. And so passed down to my mom and our family.

ready for decorating

Sand tart making was always a communal affair, each with their own role.  Mom rolling the dough, which had been refrigerated overnight, out flat. The kids cutting the shapes….star, crescent moon, reindeer, Santa, heart….glazing with egg white. Dusting with cinnamon and and maybe red or green sugar and by custom, only one other decoration.  Though every batch or so we were allowed to go crazy and really load up one cookie, usually the Santa one.  My father would command the oven, precisely timing the cookies to avoid burning. 

Passed  to  the next generation, one Christmas my wife invited my Pittsburgh cousin then living as a young single woman in New York City, to join us for a night of sand tart making. And even now in our divorced state she brings sand tarts to our family gathering. They remain a constant. 

I am sitting vigil with my mom in her final hours in an assisted living  facility in New Jersey. Scrolling through my messages, I find a Viber message from my son in Berlin, Germany. What I see gives me a smile in the midst of this journey. A sense of an unbroken circle. Five year old Roko and 3 year old  Karla are at the table with their father, cutting out cookie dough in stars and other shapes, making sand tarts.