Recipes to Help Savor the Christmas Season

Kathy Dunn, one of our SNC bakers, shares her sugar-cookie recipe. 

Sugar Cookies
Makes about 42 medium-sized cookies

1 cup butter, room-temperature
1½ cups sugar
2 egg yolks
1 cup sour cream
¼ tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 tablespoon baking powder
5 cups flour

Beat butter, sugar, egg yolks and sour cream together ’til creamy. Add dry ingredients and mix until combined. 

Roll out dough to ¼-inch thick. Place on parchment-lined sheet pan and bake at 325 F for 10 minutes.  

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A 25-year Christmas Eve tradition with the Chef Dan Froelich family is to go to Christmas Eve Mass and then home to feast on French Canadian Tourtière. Tourtière is a minced-pork pie. Froelich serves it with mashed potatoes, gravy and bread-and-butter pickles.

French Canadian Tourtière 
[Pronounced: toor-tyehr] 

3 pounds ground pork
1 garlic clove, minced
1 cup chopped onion
½ cup chopped celery
2 tablespoons parsley
1 cup chicken stock
1 teaspoon salt
Black pepper to taste
½ teaspoon rubbed sage
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup fine bread crumbs (more if needed)
Enough pastry for 2 covered 9-inch pies

Brown ground pork, drain grease. Add garlic, onions, celery, parsley, chicken stock, salt, pepper to taste, sage and nutmeg. Cover and cook for 15-20 minutes. 

Add the bread crumbs and cook with the cover off until the mixture thickens. The mixture should be moist, with little liquid. 

Preheat the oven to 425 F. When the mixture is cool, split the pork filling between the two prepared pie shells. Place a pie dough top over the top and seal the crust together. Pierce the top crust to vent.

Bake the tourtière at 425 F for 15 minutes, then at 350 F for 30 to 40 minutes.

Dec. 5, 2017