Every Christmas season when I was growing up, my mother and I would bake cookies. Sugar cookies, oatmeal cookies, gingerbread. I remember standing at the kitchen counter, stirring the dough, and sitting at the dining room table painstakingly decorating the cookies. I remember packaging them up to give them to neighbors and family and friends, because there is something particularly wonderful about sharing homemade gifts with the people you love. These small things — a little flour, a little butter, maybe some nuts and spices — create lasting memories of love and giving and happy holidays.

Unfortunately, there are many children in America for whom even these small things are out of reach. This year one in five children will go hungry. They won’t get to create the happy memories that the rest of us take for granted. And that’s why I’m honored to be a co-host of Share Our Strength’s 12 Days of Sharing Campaign. Every day for 12 days, a different food blog will post a baking recipe, creating a virtual cookie swap.

The recipe I am contributing is one of my favorite Christmas cookies — the unpronounceable pfeffernusse. German in origin, these small spice cookies are unusual in that they contain ground candied orange peel and no butter — they bake up quite firm, and are excellent with milk or a hot toddy. They ship beautifully, store for up to a month at room temperature (and improve with age) and are easy for little hands to help with.

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