Sand Tarts

When I turned five my family moved from the home of my birth on Rodman Avenue in Jenkintown, a suburb of Philadelphia, to Wyncote, the adjacent town across Tookany Creek. So every memory I have of that first home initiates in my earliest childhood — the sandbox in the back yard; the nasty shock sister Barbie got while playing “car” and sticking a key in the electrical outlet in my bedroom; our first TV set in the living room with its teeny screen; potty training; tumbling down the stairs. Across the shared driveway lived a kindly retired couple, Mr. and Mrs. Lawson. Mr. Lawson did magic tricks for us with little squares of paper. Mrs. Lawson shared a recipe for Christmas cookies — sand tarts — with my paternal grandmother, Mema. Every year at Christmastime from that day forward, Mema spent the night with us and folded together the sand tart ingredients — basically flour, sugar, eggs, and butter — to set in the fridge overnight, and then on the day following supervised my sisters and me as we flattened blobs of dough with the rolling pin, applied cookie cutters and sprinkles, and baked up batches as we surreptitiously nibbled the tasty dough.

In March I will turn seventy-five , which means that I have been enjoying the making and eating of Christmastime sand tarts for seventy years. Two weeks ago Jane and I introduced sand tart production to her clan in Lincoln, Nebraska. Last weekend my clan assembled here at New Years for a week-delayed Christmas celebration and repeated the familiar process.

The cookie cutters reside throughout the year in a drawer in what used to be our garage before it got converted to storage room. Stars, a heart, Santa, a teddy bear, reindeer, a Christmas tree, a rhinoceros, a moose, dinosaurs, the State of California, and challenging ones like the giraffe and the dog with long skinny appendages which are apt to break off as you transfer them from the cookie cutter to the baking sheet.

The grandkids apparently love the whole process as much as youthful Billy once did and especially the artful technique of pinching off a piece of dough to eat when Grandad’s back is turned. We lash up the classic Christmas songs on Spotify — Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree by Brenda Lee, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus by the Ronettes, It’s a Jolly Golly Christmas by Burl Ives — as we roll and cut and sprinkle and bake, and I generally wink at the rascals as they pinch off nibbles of batter. Who cares? I have somehow survived seven decades of batter nibbling on my way to here. As Tevye says in Fiddler on the Roof: Tradition!

Sand tarts! Try ‘em. Here’s the recipe:

2 cups sugar
1 cup softened butter
3 eggs
½ t baking soda
½ t cream of tartar
3 cups flour
2 t either vanilla or lemon extract

Cream butter and sugar together with mixer until smooth. Add each egg separately until each one is blended in. Mix in separate bowl the flour, soda, and cream of tartar. Add the dry ingredients and the vanilla or lemon extract. Mix until smooth. Put the dough in the fridge for at least an hour, but overnight is better. Liberally dust the countertop, rolling pin, and each blob of dough with flour to keep the batter from sticking. Very important. Take some dough and roll it out with a rolling pin on a cold countertop (NOT the countertop over the dishwasher) until very flat. Cut out shapes with your cookie cutters and place them on a baking pan. Decorate with sprinkles. Bake in a 350 degree for about 5-7 minutes, until the edges are slightly brown. Cool them on racks before transferring to cookie tins.

As you cut out your cookie shapes, you will leave some “waste” batter on the countertop. Wad this together and flatten it like a pancake, then throw that back in the fridge. When all those pancakes are chilled, mash a few together and roll that reincorporated blob out for more cookies. At the very end, just toss the remaining weird shapes onto your cookie sheet and bake them. Waste not! Rookie mistakes to avoid: forgetting to throw a bunch of flour on everything; letting the dough get warm. Warm unfloured dough will stick to your rolling pin and countertop causing you to say bad words.

And Mrs. Lawson . . . Thank You!