The Best Christmas Cookies Ever! Galletes!
These cookies have been in my family for generations. My great grandmother taught my grandmother who taught me. They have been a Christmas treat my entire life. They resemble waffles, and are not baked in the oven. Instead, you will need a special iron that you can purchase from here (I receive compensation when this link is used). My grandmother didn't use the electric version of the iron. She used an old caste iron gallete iron that we heated over the stove. It was a long and laborious process, but made for great family memories.
Ingredients:
5 lb bag of flour
2 lb bag of brown sugar
1 dz eggs
1 lb butter
1 tsp pure vanilla
Instructions:
You are going to need a large container to mix your cookie ingredients. I use a roasting pan.
To begin: You will need to soften your butter (I take mine out of the fridge for about an hour before I begin mixing.
1. Crack one dozen eggs into the roasting pan.
2. Add your softened butter and the vanilla. (use salted butter and only pure vanilla extract).
3. Take your mixer and thoroughly mix the above. Add the entire two pound bag of brown sugar. Mix together.
4. Add a few cups of the flour and mix. As your batter mixes continue to add additional flour. There will come a point when you can no longer use your mixer to combine the ingredients, so you will have to switch to kneading and mixing by hand. Continue to add flour and mix until you have used the entire 5lb bag of flour.
5. At this point, we have always covered with a tea towel and left it on the counter overnight. With concerns of salmonella and food poisoning, you can store your mixture in the fridge overnight.
6. Make an area where you can roll out cigar sizes of the dough. I usually lay out a few sheets of aluminum foil/waxed paper on my counter. Proceed to roll out cigar sizes of the dough and line up.
7. If you can multi task, I usually line out about 20 raw "cigars", then I heat my iron (it takes about three minutes).
8. I set aside another area with aluminum foil to place the cooked galletes on after cooking.
9. After the iron is heated, take two raw "cigars" and place side by side in the iron, close the iron, and fasten the end piece at the handle to keep the handle together.
10. While galletes are cooking you can continue rolling out the "cigars".
11. In about 45-90 seconds check your gullets. They are finished when they are a golden/mid brown color and cooked all the way through.
12. You simply dump the gullets onto the aluminum foil for them to cool. I lay out the galletes in stacks of six until I'm through. Then I bag them by the dozen to hand out.
A batch will usually yield 11-12 dozen galletes.
Buy your own gallete iron here:
