Every year she had two types of cookies she made:
Rosettes (Italian Fried Cookies)
My gosh, how we all loved these. My mom made them every year...mixed the batter, heated up a large frying pan with oil, dipped the iron into the batter, and put the iron in the oil. The cookie would separate from the iron, and when it was done, she pulled them out one by one to drain on paper towels. Then, she would give them a light dusting of confectionary powdered sugar, and they were heaven. All six of us kids would be salivating at the smell of the frying cookies, and my mother would let us eat one or two after she dusted them with the sweet, white powder.
But the ones I loved the most were the Date Pinwheels:
I made sure before she passed on that she showed me how to make these. They are a bit of a challenge because of the fragile dough that has brown sugar in it.
Heh, my mother was well known for leaving out key parts of recipes...not intentionally, but...she had a knack for it. So I spent an evening with her and I wrote down everything.
First, you have to make the date/walnut filling, simmering until it is thick, but not so thick you cannot spread it without tearing the dough apart.
Then you have to make that terribly fragile dough, which is a nightmare for people like me who tend to be a perfectionist as I cook, since it just cracks and breaks as you go. My mother, watching me fuss at it and seeing my frustration said "You can let the dough crack, fall apart, and break. Makes no difference. Just go with it."
She laid down the dough, and showed me how to get it into a rectangle for spreading the warm date-walnut filling on. 
Then, using the dough scraper as an aid, started at one end (the short side) she stuck the scraper under the dough and turned about an inch onto the rectangle...moving up, she scraped another inch or so up until she had the beginning of a roll. It broke and cracked at every single manipulation so the date filling was sloppily showing and oozing at every crack and gap-looking totally imperfect-and she said "That's just fine. Now do it again and roll a little more.
Soon, we had a tube of raw dough with the date-walnut mixture in it. She barrel-rolled it (because if she tried to pick it up, it would have broken apart) onto a piece of wax paper, then encased it and rolled it into the wax paper, sealing the ends. Now, we had a nice tube of uncut cookie-roll, and she put it in the freezer.
"Leave it in there a few hours, let it get nice and solid in the freezer."
An hour or two later, we pulled a half dozen semi-frozen tubes of un-sliced cookie out, and then, laying them on a cutting board, sliced them into1/4 - 3/8" thick slices:
You grease a cookie sheet with shortening, and lay them out. Cook them at 400 degrees for 8-15 minutes, but about 12 minutes is optimal. I like to cook them to the point the bottoms on the pan turn a dark brown, but you absolutely do not want to over cook them and make them crunch.
No Bueno.
If you cook them just right, it caramelizes the date-walnut filling, and renders the cookies wonderfully chewy, with the marvelous taste of the caramelization! If you undercook them, they are more cake-like or doughy, and nowhere as nearly as delicious. But if you do it right...cook them just long enough, they are wholly addictive.
I thank my wonderful mother and the memory of her this Christmas for showing me the way:
And here is the Recipe, for those who want to try them:
