General Notes

• Concerning the baking of macaroons: The macaroons are very soft when they are still hot, so they need to cool a bit before they can be taken from the tray without breaking them. This also makes it very easy to bake them too long because it's easy to think that they aren't done yet even though they become much harder later. They should still be a bit chewy on the inside when they are cool.
• The recipes in this section contain a lot more sugar and fat than I usually use when baking cookies and cakes throughout the rest of the year. This is in part due to tradition. Old cookbooks often used more sugar and fat in Christmas cookies because those ingredients were expensive and only used in large amounts on special occasions. The other reason is that using lots of sugar and fat makes the cookies stay fresh for longer, which is important because Christmas cookies are often eaten over a period of a month or longer. It would be nice to properly study how long the cookies stay fresh with different amounts of sugar and fat, but I don't have the time for that.