German S Cookies: Revisiting a Holiday Classic

It's the holiday season, kids...the time of year to dig out old traditions, dust off old recipes, and wax poetic about the past.  Unexpectedly smacked by a wave of nostalgia, this past weekend I channeled the ghost of my paternal grandmother, Bertha, and busted out a classic German cookie recipe.  We called them "German S Cookies" and after searching the Internet for recipes, apparently so does everyone else...I guess it goes to the practicality of the German mindset. They're not much more than a basic shortbread, with the addition of egg yolks and lemon zest, but it's their simplicity that makes them so enjoyable. They're just slightly sweetened, the sort of cookie you can graze on absentmindedly while enjoying some eggnog at a holiday party.

As far as I can tell, the "s" shape might relate to similar cookies called Spritzgebäck that are made with a cookie press and shaped into random letters/shapes. One recipe (this one), refers to them as Allgäuer Butter S cookies, and was what I used as the basis for mine. Maybe these originated in the Allgäu region of Germany? Considering the fact that the Allgäu is a region in the states of Bavaria/Baden-Württemberg, and is the ancestral home of my grandmother and her family, it would make sense that she made these.

I remember Bertha baking dozens--hundreds--of S cookies every Christmas, rolling and shaping them on auto pilot as she coached me and my considerably less-adept fingers.  As it's been several years since I made them, it took a while to get accustomed to the dough, but after the first dozen or so, I found a rhythm: instead of rolling out long strands of dough then cutting them into shorter strands, I rolled just enough for a single "s" at a time.  It might have been more time consuming, but it allowed for greater control over the thickness of each cookie.

Here's the recipe I used, and while I don't think it's exactly like the one she had (I still haven't gotten around to translating her cookbook), it worked well enough and the end result tasted very similar to what I remember.

German S Cookies

Ingredients:
9 tablespoons butter, softened to room temp
1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs, yolks and whites separated
1 teaspoon lemon zest (essentially from one lemon)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 3/4 cup flour
Sprinkles, nonpareils, etc.

Directions:
Combine the butter and sugar in a bowl, beating until creamy. Add the egg yolks, lemon juice and zest, then knead in the flour. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let is relax in the fridge for about an hour.

Preheat the oven to 375.  Taking about a teaspoon or so of dough, roll into a 3 inch long "snake," shape into an "S" and place on a parchment covered cookie sheet. You can line the cookies up close together--they don't do a whole lot of rising or spreading.  Brush them with the egg white and sprinkle with the nonpareils/sprinkles.  Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until they're just lightly browned.

Allow to cool, then eat! They'll keep for several days if well wrapped and several weeks if frozen.

Fröhliche Weihnachten!