Grandma Annette's Chicago Rosettes Recipe
by Josh Downey
Rosette cookies are incredibly thin, crispy, powdered sugar covered snowflakes of sweetness. Such easy cookies to make, but you need a special tool to make them (posted below). Rosette cookies are fried (traditionally in lard) but you can use any oil. I use the fat trimmings when we make Italian sausage to render lard & keep it in a mason jar in the fridge for at least a year. Anyway, this recipe is so simple & it's a great tradition to start with your family & friends! Simply dust with powdered sugar or flip & fill the hollow back with jam or jelly.
A little bit of my history with these treats. Growing up in the Chicago area there was this weird tradition with a lot of people making these Scandinavian region Rosette cookies around Christmas time. I related these cookies with Christmas growing up, but I have no ties to Scandinavian heritage. The more people I've met around Chicago, the more I realized these little, crispy, sugary cookies are popular around the holidays to a lot of Chicagoans.
My grandma Annette used to make them every Christmas Eve for our family parties in Cicero. She passed when I was younger, but I remembered these cookies from my childhood, so I was able to get the recipe from family. Every time I make these I think of our time together & I love eating them with some evening coffee in these snowy winter nights. Print out the PDF recipe by clicking the image below.
Grab an iron off Amazon & tag #ChicagoJohnnys to show us how your Rosettes turned out!
Appreciate the support my friends - Johnny