Merry Christmas!

Today is December 26. I realize that. You may be raising an eyebrow, then, at my enthusiastic greeting when Christmas is soooo yesterday. For us Catholics, however, THE PARTY HAS JUST BEGUN. We have an 8 day celebration (it like one day spread over an entire week) till the Maji show up. You see, we've spent the past month or so getting ready, in anxious anticipation of the God-mane-man and now its happened!!! Now we celebrate the incarnation- the enfleshment of God.

And nothing says God-made-man like a poem and powdered sugar covered cookies. I recently made Mexican Wedding Cookies and wanted to share the recipe with you because I'm naive enough to think you care about what I did last weekend. But first, the poem:

"O, like a tiny cradle"
by Angelus Silesius (1624-1677)

O, like a tiny cradle,
Could thy heart become,
God would on earth again
Be born an infant son.


Please, don't think that Christmas amounts to nothing more than poems and cookies- that it has no substance. Rather, it is festival-time and these little outward ways of celebrating point to the deeper reality that God has sent the human race a savior. These cookies and poems are tactile ways to celebrate the invisible reality! So grab that egg nog, turn up the carols, and follow along.

These cookies are da bomb. Which, appropriately, is another name they go by (on account of the "bomb" effect in your mouth when eating one). They're comprised mostly of butter and then rolled in powdered sugar and if that isn't enough to entice you, then you don't deserve to eat them.
Their effort-to-credit ratio is unusually in your favor! Besides being unequivocally delicious, they are easy to make and people are super impressed. Take for evidence the real-life conversation that happened in my parents' kitchen directly after I finished making them and immediately as my older brother laid eyes upon them.
Brother: "Ohhhhh those are good. You made these?"
Me: "Yep!"
Brother: "I'm impressed."

How to make Mexican Wedding Cookies:
Cream the following: 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup shortening, 1 tsp vanilla extract
Mix in the following: 1 cup finely chopped walnuts, 2 cups flour
Form into small balls (about 1.5 in in diameter is great!). Bake at 400 degrees for 10 mins. Let cool. Roll in powdered sugar. For best results refrigerate overnight before serving.

I am unsure how many this recipe is suppose to yield, as I ate somewhere between 2/3 of a dozen and 1.5 dozen after the "roll in powdered sugar" step before placing them on the plate.

Eating these little snowy delicacies I can just imagine little Mexican women in the 17th century mixing away, catching up on the town gossip (who bought sheep from who, what so-and-so would wear to the wedding, how many tamales the groom's family would eat) as they prepared these little cookies the afternoon before the wedding.
And if I have any say in the matter, when I get married I shall have 1,000 of these in lieu of a cake. Consider yourself invited.

Merry Christmas!!