Cinnamon Crisps — The Little Sweet That Belongs on Every Nochebuena Table

Nochebuena. Christmas Eve, year three. The tamales are delivered, the house is clean, the tree is up (Diego wired the lights — 4.5 inches apart, third year running, and I think the 4.5-inch interval is now genetically encoded in our tree), and the family is gathering. Luis Jr. has leave. He walked through the door at 4 PM in civilian clothes and Camila ran to him and he picked her up and spun her and she screamed and laughed and the sound — a six-year-old screaming with laughter in the arms of a nineteen-year-old soldier — is the sound of Christmas in the Gutierrez house. Not carols. Not bells. A sister and a brother and the air between them, spinning.

Andrea came. Carmen came. The table was full — full the way it hasn't been since Luis Jr. left for basic training. Seven people around a table designed for six (we added a folding chair — the folding chair of love, I call it, because love always makes room). The tamales were Rosa's. The flan was Rosa's. The champurrado was Rosa's. Everything on the table was Rosa's except the people eating it, who are mine, and the bakery that made it possible, which is ours.

Diego's Christmas gift to me was revealed: a concha-shaped clock. He built it from a clock mechanism he bought online, a wooden disc he shaped and painted to look like a concha, and a hanger he engineered from wire. The concha clock tells time. It hangs on the bakery wall now, next to Rosa's photographs and my naturalization certificate and the growing gallery of the things that matter. A clock shaped like a concha. Time shaped like bread. Diego's gift says: time and bread are the same thing, and both are running out, and both are being made, and the making is the point.

Camila's Christmas list was: a microphone (she got an upgrade — a proper karaoke machine this year, from Carmen), a guitar (she got a ukulele, which is a guitar for six-year-olds, and she accepted it with the pragmatism of a musician who understands that you start where you are), and — yes — a dog. She did not get a dog. The dog petition enters year four. I am weakening. Luis is weakening. The children sense the weakening the way sharks sense blood. It is a matter of time.

Every Nochebuena has a quiet gap — the ten minutes between the last guest arriving and the tamales hitting the table — and something sweet needs to live in that gap. This year, while Luis Jr. was still spinning Camila and Diego was hanging the concha clock and the folding chair of love was being unfolded, I set out a plate of cinnamon crisps. Cinnamon is the spice of champurrado, of Mexican hot chocolate, of every warm thing my family has ever reached for — and these crisp little cookies carry it simply and honestly, which felt exactly right for a night that was already full to the edges.

Cinnamon Crisps

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 12 min | Total Time: 27 min | Servings: 36 crisps

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, divided
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar, divided
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Preheat. Heat oven to 375°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Mix dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, 1 tsp cinnamon, and salt. Set aside.
3. Cream butter and sugar. In a large bowl, beat softened butter with 1/2 cup sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until combined.
4. Combine. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir until a soft dough forms. Do not overmix.
5. Make cinnamon sugar. In a small bowl, stir together the remaining 1/4 cup sugar and remaining 1/2 tsp cinnamon.
6. Shape. Roll dough into 1-inch balls. Roll each ball in the cinnamon sugar to coat, then place on prepared baking sheets about 2 inches apart. Flatten each ball slightly with the bottom of a glass.
7. Bake. Bake 10–12 minutes, until the edges are just golden. The centers may look slightly underdone — they will crisp as they cool.
8. Cool. Transfer to a wire rack and cool completely. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 65 | Protein: 1g | Fat: 3g | Carbs: 9g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 20mg