Hand Cookies

Whimsical shapes just right for the holidays

It’s a mix of shadow play and cookie making …

“It” is hand-cookie making, which can be as creative as you are and as traditional as you make it. Hand cookies in their simplest form are cut out around an outspread hand—and a child’s hand is the most convenient size for a cookie. But hand cookies can be much more than that: A butter knife can trace around thumbs and forefingers to make swans … and signs of peace and angels with beautiful wings …

Roll the dough out to about an eighth of an inch thick, and cut around your hand, or a child’s hand, with a butter knife … We make geese by closing our fingers and adding a neck and head coming out at the wrist. You can make a dog by tracing around the hand in the position for a dog-shadow picture.

The fingers of both hands can form the skirt and wings of an angel; put a round head where the palm ends at the wrist. Or you can make people by using your right thumb and two fingers for one arm and two legs and tracing your left thumb for the other arm. Use sunflower seeds, nuts, and currants for buttons and eyes and for fingernails and jewelry on the hands.

—“Cookies Made by Hands,” by Robin Hansen,December 1983