One of my favorite things about Winter is when you get those perfect, crisp days. The days when you can go for a hike in the snow-laden woods and breathe in air so cold it tightens your lungs. Now that I live in Germany, I get to experience those days so much more than I ever did growing up in the American South. I’ve found that on these walks, I’ve developed a new love of foraging. Of gathering plants and nuts and bringing them back home to use in recipes and rituals. It’s always exciting to see what I can find to fill up the kitchen.

Unfortunately, Winter in Germany is also very wet. This means that many days i’m confined to the house, where it’s easy to quickly go stir crazy. On one of those days, I fell deep into the Pinterest rabbit-hole, and found a recipe that brought the outside, inside.

These mushroom cookies are freaking adorable, not as hard as they look, and perfect for bringing nature into your home in a perfectly edible (non-poisonous) way. I found the recipe on a blog called Cooking Melangery, which i’ve linked here –> Russian Mushroom Christmas Cookies

At first, I was intimidated by these cookies because they look hard. But I promise, they’re not! They’re just time-consuming, so settle in for an afternoon of baking, music and, of course, wine.

I hope on your next rainy day, when it’s cold and wet and you can’t venture into the woods, these cookies can bring you a little bit of solace. I know they did for me.