17 Is My Lucky Number - Or Is It?

In Finland, there is one kind of Christmas cookies - the gingerbread cookies. Until two years ago, I was more than fine with that. But now I’ve learned that any self-respecting German woman bakes a huge variety of Christmas cookies, or Plätzchen as they call them. A friend of mine told me that her grand-mother used to bake 17 different kinds, and so many that she could send a tin box full of cookies to every one of her children and grand-children - 15 boxes all in all.

17 happens to be my lucky number. This year I’m going to take the challenge: will I be able to bake 17 types of Christmas cookies in 17 days? Stay tuned - I’ll post the experience in my blog!

I’m going to bake a double portion of each variety, so that half of the Plätzchen can be stored until Christmas while the other half can be eaten right away. I know, this is not normally the case (a second challenge for any Plätzchen baker is to hide the cookies so well that no-one gets to taste them before the D-day) but I’m just too curious to know how they taste!

Besides, this will allow me to find out how the different Plätzchen types keep these magic three weeks and a half. (Or a bit less for the last ones on the list, of course.)

Now I need to hurry and get the first cookies out of the oven. You'll hear more on those tomorrow!