The third installment is my mother’s mandel bread recipe. It comes from this cookbook that we have had in her kitchen for literally my whole life. A small square cookbook that came from some committee in the town she grew up in on the North Shore of Chicago.
This recipe calls for cinnamon sugar actually added into the dough, not just thrown on top. I halved the recipe and it made about 20 slices of mandel bread.
These are the nostalgic mandel bread that evoke memories of my mom making large bags of cookies and gifting them to everyone we knew around the holidays. The bags always consisted of chocolate fudge cookies, mandel bread, and paintbox cookies (I will post this recipe soon!).
Mandel Bread
1 Cup butter
1 Cup sugar
4 Eggs
4 Cups flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 Teaspoon vanilla
1 Package chocolate chips
Cinnamon sugar to taste
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cream together butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs one at a time and add the vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and mix well.
Add 2 sprinkles of cinnamon sugar and chocolate chips. Mix until fully blended.
Grease 2 baking sheets. Shape the dough into 4 loaves. The dough will spread so do not make the loaves too wide/flat. Sprinkle the top of each loaf with cinnamon sugar.
Bake 25-30 minutes. Take out of the oven and slice each loaf into ½ inch slices and lay slices on their sides. Sprinkle the side with cinnamon sugar. Bake again until golden, about 15 minutes.
NOTES: My mom will turn the oven off after those 15 minutes and then lets the mandel bread harden in the cooling oven. I didn’t do this and mine were a little soft in the middle.
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