Baking cookies: where does the custom come from?

Baking cookies means dough-covered surfaces, flour-covered kids, and greedy little hands everywhere. The apartment is fragrant, and a gloomy December afternoon flies by while cutting out and decorating stars, gingerbread men or Christmas trees.

When were the first cookies baked?

Cookie baking only started around 1850. However, the origin of baking cookies at Christmas goes back much further. The blessed bread distributed to the faithful at the end of the celebration of Mass was gradually refined and given a Christian stamp. Monks and nuns in the monasteries further refined them.

Cookies became really popular in the 19th century, when the tea culture of the British spilled over to the continent. The Austrians and Bohemians in particular came up with cookies such as vanilla crescents, Spitzbuben, spritz and butter biscuits. So each country created its own types of cookies, which are still popular today.