I grew up in Florida, but the rest of my family, uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents all lived in Toronto. I didn’t get to see my grandparents all the time, but I did get to see them for a few months during the winter when they would escape the cold and a few weeks in the summer when we would escape the heat. In either Toronto or Florida, most of my memories revolve around food.
My Bubbie (my father’s mother) always gave us Nips and her friends in the condo gave us chocolate covered candy sticks. Bubbie would make cornflake crumb chicken and farfel and corn and we loved it. My mother’s mother, we called Savta, was not much of a cook, but boy could she bake.
Every time we visited Savta she would have a batch of Savta cookies waiting for us. Not much to them, they are a basic sugar cookie, but they tasted amazing and were so versatile. We used this dough to make plain cookies, to make hamantaschen and even rolled rugelach-style cookies using the dough. I still make these cookies every year! I will always call them Savta cookies and I hope that I can pass on my memories of my beloved Savta to my kids when we bake together.
This dough is wonderful as a plain cookie, which is why it also works beautifully for hamantashen and even rugelach. Visit Joy of Kosher for additional recipes.
Ingredients:
Makes about 36 cookies depending on the size
• 1 cup margarine
• 1 cup Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 21/2 cups Flour
• 21/2 tsp. baking powder
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
Preparation:
1 Mix margarine, sugar and vanilla in food processor. Add eggs. In a separate bowl mix 2½ teaspoons baking powder with 2½ cups flour. Add the flour mixture to the wet mixture and mix until dough forms.
2 Roll out dough and use as you like.
3 Bake at 400 for 12 minutes.
4 Variation: You can substitute 1 teaspoon lemon juice for the vanilla and it will make it crispier.
