St. Matthew's Coins
Today is the feast day of St. Matthew, the most famous tax collector in history. I was unable to find a particular recipe to celebrate his feast day, so I got creative. My kids love it when I do that for feast days -- it usually means I'm coming up with a dessert of some sort.
One of St. Matthew's symbols is a bag of coins, so I opted to make cookies and decorate them as if they were coins. I used a very simple sugar cookie dough and rolled small balls. I then rolled them in white sugar, and pressed them flat (to about 1/4") with a glass dipped first in a light coat of vegetable oil, then in sugar. My problem was how to make them look like coins. There was no way I was going to make icing profiles of Caesar in a laurel wreath on each of these cookies. I'm all for authenticity, but there are limits.
Now, in Fr. Metzler's homily last weekend, he mentioned that the common currency of the time was called the dinarius. The Latin name means "containing ten," because initially, the coin was worth 10 asses. So, there it was -- all I had to do was put a 10 on each cookie. Or, since we're talking about Roman coins, an X.
Enjoy!
Thank you, by the way, for taking them with you when you left the house that evening.
ReplyDeleteI have come to truly appreciate (& enjoy!) the taste of money!!!