There’s something especially rich about a grandmother’s holiday cookies. It isn’t that she uses more butter or sugar than a recipe calls for, though she may add a little more of those ingredients to the mixing bowl too. Her cookies are a winter food group, and she always insists that you haven’t eaten enough of them. She just knows that her dough is right based on feel, and she pulls trays from the oven based on smell instead of time. Her baking feels effortless — almost innate. But what seems like natural-born talent took years of practice, and she delights in passing down her wisdom to little floured hands. Elizabeth Meijer’s family knows this well. For them, she is that grandmother, and her kitchen is at the heart of many precious holiday memories.
Robin Meijer Barnett, Meijer’s daughter, remembers the special place her mother’s lace cookies held in their holiday traditions. “My mom started making her lace cookies about 50 years ago. I remember eating them when I was little,” says Barnett. “She’d have to put them in a cookie tin and hide it so nobody would get into them. We wouldn’t make them all the time since it’s kind of tedious to bake them, so it was special when she’d make them. We’d mostly do them during holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas, or whenever we had lots of family together. One year, my mom said that we should try putting them on top of sweet potatoes with a little butter, and it was so good! And we’ll still do that sometimes.”
Learning to make Meijer’s lace cookies has become a rite of passage for anyone who is eager to keep the family tradition alive. “We’ve all helped her make her lace cookies — everyone who’s wanted to know how to make them. Of course, there are some of us who just want to eat them,” Barnett says. “This recipe has been handed down from my mom to me, and from me to my daughter and daughters-in-law. There are a lot of lace cookies out there, but this one is my mom’s, and it’s important to share family recipes. My mom is 91 now, and I think it’s so wonderful that she just gives out the recipe.”
Those family cookie sessions are a sweet reminder of the times when everyone is under the same roof — something harder to pull off these days. “Everybody is so spread out, and our families are getting bigger,” Barnett says. “But when we do it, we’re making something together. I think it’s a rare, beautiful thing these days to be able to set aside time for each other.”
Ama’s Lace Cookies
Makes 30 cookies
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 cup quick oats
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
Pinch of kosher salt
1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with thin aluminum foil (not heavy duty) and set aside.
2. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl.
3. Spoon one teaspoon of batter per cookie onto foil-lined pan, spacing them four inches apart to allow cookies to spread.
4. Bake for 8 minutes, or until light brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool to room temperature. Do not remove cookies from the aluminum foil.
5. Place the aluminum foil with cookies in the refrigerator for five minutes. When chilled, carefully peel the cookies off the foil. Store at room temperature in an airtight container.
