Week 8 is Heirlooms

I have several of them from my ancestors. My paternal grandmother’s ring, and my maternal grandmother’s dessert plates.  I also have several from my great grandmother.  Her ‘Rebecca at the Well’ tea pot, and her cookie cutters.  But the one that I use the most is her Springerle board.  I do not know if she brought it with her from Marburg when she immigrated in 1867 or if it was hand-carved for her after she arrived in Richmond, Virginia. 
For years my mother would make Springerle at Christmas time and share them with family members.  Now I’m the one making them and mailing them off to cousins and my daughter.  I’d always followed the recipe religiously since it was my grandmother’s.  That is until my mother told me how her mother never wrote any recipe down and make them all from memory.  Mom was the one who wrote down what she thought her mother had used.  So now I make them, and the other Christmas cookies based on what looks and feels right. How does an egg today compare to what my grandmother or even my mother had?  I have no idea.  So, if the dough feels right without all the flour, or it needs more flour I no longer force it to be what that recipe says. Of course, my mother would never have admitted it, but I’ve been told my cookies are better

The dough is refrigerated for a day or so and then cut into cookies.  The dough is rolled out and then placed on the Springerle board and pounded to get the prints.  Mom used a cloth filled with flour and tied. I just use my fingers to push the dough into the floured board.  Then the cookies are cut and placed on a cookie sheet to go out in the cold.  Mom would put them in boxes on her back porch in Richmond, Virginia.  We put them in the garage inside a car or our Airstream. Because I live in Northern Minnesota if the temperature is below freezing, I must let them warm up inside and thaw out a bit before baking, or they lose their prints. Some years the prints turn out better than others.  But they always taste good!