{"id":3366,"date":"2017-12-11T09:00:53","date_gmt":"2017-12-11T16:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/villasentieri.com\/?post_type=recipe&p=3366"},"modified":"2026-09-02T10:58:49","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T17:58:49","slug":"grandma-mihaliks-butter-cookies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/villasentieri.com\/index.php\/2017\/12\/11\/grandma-mihaliks-butter-cookies\/","title":{"rendered":"Grandma Mihalik’s Butter Cookies"},"content":{"rendered":"

December 11, 2017<\/span><\/p>\n

When I was young, cookie season started in mid-December and continued until early January. Friends and family all had platters and trays of cookies on their tables, often of the multi-tiered variety. Each was carefully wrapped in plastic ready to be unwrapped when guests arrived. The platters were replenished after each group of guests left.<\/p>\n

In my circle of family and friends, cookies usually fell into one of two categories, Italian-American or Slovak-American.<\/p>\n

To be sure, there was some crossover.<\/p>\n

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Nut rolls and poppy seed rolls are Slovak (well, OK, they\u2019re really pretty much pan-Eastern European but since I grew up in a half-Slovak family we considered them to be Slovak even though we knew they were also made by the Poles, Ukrainians, Slovenians, and other Eastern Europeans in town) but they were made by the Italian side of my family as much as by the Slovak side.<\/p>\n

There were also nut horns, butterballs, and thumbprints which defied ethnic baking boundaries.<\/p>\n

However, flat, rolled cookies, like these butter cookies, were not usually made by Italian-Americans.\u00a0 The totos <\/a>that I wrote about last December and the colored cookies <\/a>that are coming up later this week were not usually made by Slovak-Americans.<\/p>\n

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This recipe came to me by way of Aunt Ann who was married to my father\u2019s brother, Jano. She said it was Grandma\u2019s recipe.<\/p>\n

I remember eating these cookies and seeing them piled on my grandmother\u2019s table over the holidays.<\/p>\n

These cookies are similar to the sand tarts that are common in the central part of Pennsylvania where the Pennsylvania Dutch, of German extraction, historically lived. The big difference, though, is that the dough for these butter cookies is prepared more like a pie crust while the dough for sand tarts is prepared more like cake batter. That is, for these cookies, flour and sugar are cut into butter with a pastry blender whereas for sand tarts the butter and sugar are first creamed together.<\/p>\n

There also are sand tarts that I think of as more Southern.\u00a0 These are usually rolled into balls or formed into shapes and baked but not rolled thin like Pennsylvania Dutch sand tarts and my grandmother\u2019s butter cookies.<\/p>\n

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Grandma Mihalik's Butter Cookies<\/h2>\n
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The cookies should just be pale golden brown on the bottom. The color and weight of the cookie sheet significantly influence cooking. I find that shiny aluminum cookie sheets of medium weight work best. Dark metal will cause the bottom of the cookies to brown too much. Allow the cookies to rest for about 30 seconds before removing them from the cookie sheets. If you wait too long the cookies will lose their flexibility and are likely to break.<\/div>\n
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Prep Time <\/span>1 hour<\/span><\/span> hr<\/span><\/span><\/div>
Cook Time <\/span>1 hour<\/span><\/span> hr<\/span><\/span><\/div>
Total Time <\/span>2 hours<\/span><\/span> hrs<\/span> 30 minutes<\/span><\/span> mins<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n
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Servings: <\/span>7<\/span> dozen<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Ingredients
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