Ham Sandwich Indicted!

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 ...

Sometimes, the only thing to do on a rainy Sunday night is to bust out a new cookbook and make something that you've never made before. In this case, it was the Golden Book of Baking that my sister-in-law gave me for my birthday (thanks, Eva!) and the recipe was Apple Kuchen Crumble. This was the recipe of choice for a couple of reasons: 1) I had 3 pounds of frozen, sliced apples in my freezer that needed to get used, and 2) I was actually home for the several hours required for raising and proofing the dough. For those of you that didn't grow up with off-the-boat German grandmothers for whom baking was a part of life and not something to blog home about, apple kuchen (cake) is a German pastry with a bread-dough like base that's topped with sliced apples and a crumb topping or maybe a light glaze. It's not overly sweet, as the focus is on the fruit, and it was the de rigeur dessert at many of our family holiday dinners. The thing that was great about my Grandma Ber...