ingredients
Each day until Christmas I'll be posting one classic family recipe. Traditionally, my extended family assembles at my parents' house on Christmas Eve for a seated dinner for 35 people. Our menu usually includes shrimp cocktail and scampi, angel hair aglio olio, eggplant involtini, fennel, orange and pomegranate salad, and other classic Italian and Italian-American dishes, sometimes stuffed calamari or chicken marsala, but generally not a feast of the seven fishes (we have a lot of seafood-refusers). The dessert table is usually at risk of collapsing under its own weight, including these buttery starlight cookies, almond petit-fours (similar to rainbow cookies), melty chocolate crinkles, decadent peanut butter cups, almond-paste cookies (often several kinds), baklava, round anise cookies, pusties (pasticciotti) and more. I also love to make sugar snowflakes with pale blue and white icing, soft gingersnaps, saffron madeleines, checkerboard shortbread, and, this year, maple-pumpkin cupcakes.
This recipe comes from my grandmother Ida and can be challenging. It demands patience to complete the required number of rolls. The flaky, buttery cookies are especially delicious fresh from the oven.
However, if you happen to mix up the starlight dough with some sugar cookie dough you also happen to have chilling in the refrigerator, here is what can happen:
Delicious nonetheless, but remember to sprinkle with sugar since the dough has none...
Dry yeast, one package
Water, warm, 1/4 cup
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| Original Starlight recipe with diagram. |
Flour, sifted, 3 3/4 cups
Butter, softened, 2 sticks or 1 cup
Eggs, two
Sour cream, 1/2 cup
Vanilla extract, 3 teaspoons
Butter, softened, 2 sticks or 1 cup
Eggs, two
Sour cream, 1/2 cup
Vanilla extract, 3 teaspoons
Sugar, 1 1/2 cups
directions
1. Dissolve yeast in warm water. Set aside.
directions
1. Dissolve yeast in warm water. Set aside.
2. Sift flour and add softened butter.
3. Work like pie crust.
4. Beat eggs, sour cream, and one teaspoon of vanilla.
5. Add egg mixture to flour mixture.
6. Add yeast to combined mixture.
7. Work dough until smooth.
8. Cover and chill for two hours or more.
9. Combine sugar and remaining two teaspoons vanilla.
10. Divide dough and sugar mixture in half.
11. Roll dough in 6 inch (15 cm) by 12 inch (30 cm) rectangle.
12. Sprinkle lightly with some of sugar mixture.
13. Fold rectangle of dough like a letter (trifold).
14. Roll out into a rectangle and sprinkle with sugar again.
15. Repeat until entire half of sugar mixture is used.
16. Cut rectangle into 32 strips and twist each.
17. Bake at 375˚F for 12 to 15 minutes on a cookie sheet lined with foil or parchment paper.
3. Work like pie crust.
4. Beat eggs, sour cream, and one teaspoon of vanilla.
5. Add egg mixture to flour mixture.
6. Add yeast to combined mixture.
7. Work dough until smooth.
8. Cover and chill for two hours or more.
9. Combine sugar and remaining two teaspoons vanilla.
10. Divide dough and sugar mixture in half.
11. Roll dough in 6 inch (15 cm) by 12 inch (30 cm) rectangle.
12. Sprinkle lightly with some of sugar mixture.
13. Fold rectangle of dough like a letter (trifold).
14. Roll out into a rectangle and sprinkle with sugar again.
15. Repeat until entire half of sugar mixture is used.
16. Cut rectangle into 32 strips and twist each.
17. Bake at 375˚F for 12 to 15 minutes on a cookie sheet lined with foil or parchment paper.
makes
32 cookies
the story
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| With two of my youngest cousins, Emmi and Chloe, then 10 months and 4. Christmas Eve 2005. |
This recipe comes from my grandmother Ida and can be challenging. It demands patience to complete the required number of rolls. The flaky, buttery cookies are especially delicious fresh from the oven.
 |
| Starlight snowflakes |
Delicious nonetheless, but remember to sprinkle with sugar since the dough has none...
 |
| Christmas Eve 2012 |
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| Starlight cookies are in the glass dish behind the left candlestick, c. 1998. |
I can't believe this post went two years with no comments!
ReplyDeleteI loved reading the handwritten recipe you included. I, too, have this identical recipe, handed down from sister-in-law's husband's grandmother who was born in the old country. She called them Starlight Cookies. The written recipe can't possibly convey the delicious yeasty vanilla aroma of these treats when they're still warm from the oven.