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Holiday Treats

Almond Horn Cookies & Towering Wreath Cakes
By Sharon Hudgins • Photographs Courtesy Sharon Hudgins

When I was growing up in a small Texas town, my family attended the local Lutheran church, some of whose members were immigrants from Germany, Norway, and Denmark. Every year when the Christmas season arrived, they baked (and I got to taste) a variety of holiday treats made from the Old World recipes they’d brought with them from northern Europe: buttery, sugary, cinnamon rolls; sweet-spicy gingerbreads; vanilla crescents covered with confectioners’ sugar; and cakes finely decorated with marzipan.


On my first trip to Germany in 1969, I also discovered delicious Mandelhörnchen—dense, chewy, crescent-shaped cookies coated with flaked almonds and dipped in chocolate. For me, it was love at first bite. Although these “almond horns” are traditional at Christmas, they’re so popular that many German Konditoreien (pastry shops) sell them all year round. Now, every time I travel to Germany from my home base in the U.S., as soon as the plane lands in Frankfurt my husband and I head to the large bakery in the airport for him to buy a dense loaf of multigrain bread and for me to buy a big Mandelhörnchen.

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