At this point, I’ve made a lot of recipes from old recipe cards and I have definitely found some favorites, but I have to say that my favorite category of recipe cards are the holiday ones. After all, holidays are about tradition and my favorite holiday traditions generally revolve around cooking! I love to see the recipes other families held dear during the holiday season and this one, Ann Roger’s Christmas Cookies, seemed like a very festive addition to any Christmas cookie box.

This card came to me through the Recipe Tin Project, which is a project where I cook my way through an old recipe tin full of vintage recipes. But you might have already guessed that. It’s chock full of old recipe cards, most of which seem to be from the ’60s and ’70s, though some are older. I love food history, and the idea is to breathe new life into these recipes from the past and maybe learn a technique or two from them along the way. The recipes come from different people with different handwriting; some have sweet illustrations while others are on plain (often smudged and stained) index cards.

This recipe is written out on a plain index card in blue ink. It has some creasing but no major spills or stains, and while all the ingredients are clearly listed out, there’s not much to go on as far as directions. It tells you to chill the dough and slice it and how long to bake it, but the mixing process is guess work.

But that’s fine — I’ve made a cookie or two before. I creamed together the butter and sugar before mixing in the egg and vanilla, and then added the flour, nuts, and candied cherries. I opted for walnuts here (the card just says “chopped nuts”) and I chopped the cherries roughly. I also used the mixer to incorporate the cherries so they broke up a little more.

The card says to divide the dough “in rolls,” so I made two logs and used wax paper to help roll them into a smoother shape.

The chill time isn’t specified, so I just left them in the fridge long enough to be easily sliceable, which was about an hour.

I opted to slice them about a quarter inch thick and they baked up perfectly in the 13-15 minute timeframe that the card called for.

They’re a lovely and festive cookie. They are soft and buttery, but the cherries offer a sweet fruity chew. I think chopping them a bit was the right call! It made for a more even mix and gives you just the right amount of cherry flavor in each bite.