Cookie-Cutter Liturgical Living

Barb Szyszkiewicz shares a way to use the kitchen tools you already have to add to your feast-day celebrations.

Got cookie cutters? First of all, they’re not just for cookies anymore. And second, they can be a good entry point for liturgical living (well, liturgical snacking, anyway).

I have a ridiculously large collection of cookie cutters. Now that my kids are young adults, these only get used at Christmastime when I make cut-out cookies, but when they were younger, I used cookie cutters a lot. I got the idea from my dad.

Dad packed our school lunches every morning, beginning when I was in middle school and continuing throughout my high-school career. Every day he did something special with the sandwich. Maybe it was sliced in 4 strips, 9 little squares, or many tiny triangles. Around Halloween he’d “carve” a jack-o-lantern face in the top slice of bread. It wasn’t long before my classmates noticed what he was doing, and people would want to see what special sandwich he’d made each day.

large pile of cookie cutters

When my kids came along, I liked the idea of making special sandwiches. Then I figured out that I could cut the bread with cookie cutters and the process would go much more quickly. Using cookie cutters, I could make sandwiches shaped like stars, shamrocks, pumpkins, or dinosaurs. The kids loved them, and they were great fun at birthday parties. (I froze all the bread scraps from making these sandwiches and used those to make bread crumbs or stuffing.)

In December when I made Christmas cookies, I dumped out my big container of cookie cutters to find the ones I’d use. I realized that a lot of the cookie cutters I had could make fun sandwiches for feast days. A special shaped sandwich at lunch or toast at breakfast is an opening for parents to share a little about that day's saint.

Click to tweet:
Use cookie cutters to make fun, fancy sandwiches for feast days. #catholicmom

Here are some cookie-cutter shapes I found in my collection, and the saints to go with them:

Star: St. Dominic
Music note: St. Cecilia
Boat: St. Brendan
Heart: Sacred Heart of Jesus, Immaculate Heart of Mary, and of course St. Valentine
House: St. Joseph
Sun: St. Clare of Assisi
Bird: St. Francis of Assisi
Angel: Archangels, guardian angels, St. Matthew the Evangelist
Eagle: St. John the Evangelist
Cow/Ox: St. Luke the Evangelist
Lion: St. Mark the Evangelist, Daniel from the Old Testament
Airplane: St. Joseph of Cupertino
Cross: any patron saint of priests, such as St. Charles Borromeo and St. John Vianney; also any bishop or pope
Seashell: St. James the Greater
Shamrock: St. Patrick. St. Brigid of Ireland, St. Dymphna, St. Columba
Horse: St. Joan of Arc
Flower: St. Thérèse of Lisieux
Maple leaf: any Canadian saint
Carrot: St. Isidore the Farmer, St. George, Bl. Stanley Rother
Fish: St. Peter, St. Andrew