One of my favorite holiday traditions is baking -- and eating! -- cookies. Each year, I glance over the multitudes of cookbooks on my shelves, and scour my library of issues of Bon Apetit from Decembers past, but I usually end up boiling it down to a few tried and true favorites. My top 3 choices for Christmas cookies are rugelach (which is actually an eastern European Jewish cookie), Viennese Crescents (the crumbly, buttery, nutty, powdered sugar coated variety), and my number one hands down choice for yuletide bakery is ......... SUGAR COOKIES. Yup. Kind of Plain-Jane for the likes of me, I admit, but they are without a doubt my favorites.
When I was in 8th grade, I conned my mom into helping me bake these sugar cookies. She usually opted for the kelly-green corn-flake wreaths decorated with red-hots (that made your bowel movements the next morning look a leprechaun's). Making actual cookie dough, with food-colored frosting was a little outside of her comfort zone. But she was willing to humor me!
All day, we rolled out dough and cut them into reindeer, Christmas trees, stars, bells, and Santas. We filled cookie sheet after cookie sheet with cutouts and perseveringly baked each one of them off. We waited patiently while they all cooled, and then .... it was time to decorate.
Up until this point, I felt I had this cookie-baking thing down pat. I had no idea what was in store for me. Over six dozen sugar cookies waited anxiously for me on the counter. I had my bowls of royal icing before me in shades of white, red, green, yellow, and blue. For very nearly 8 hours, I frosted and decorated these godforsaken cookies, one at a time. By the second dozen, my mom reneged her offer to help me. It was fun at first to make each one look prettier than the next, but by the last couple of dozen all the royal icing went into the same bowl to make BLACK frosting. I was no longer amused and no longer felt festive by ANY stretch of the imagination. My 12 year old back was aching and my patience was stretched thinner than a crack whore.
But at last I reached the final cookie -- a black reindeer with a redhot for an eye -- and I asked myself a question: WHO was going to eat all of these cookies?????? The F word may have escaped my lips. I asked my mom, because I was legitimately concerned. "We'll take them to Christmas dinner at your Grandfathers!" GREAT idea!!!! Good one, Mom.
So Christmas Day comes, and we go to my grandfather's house for dinner. There's a good dozen or so people there, and my step-grandmother was VERY happy to see that I brought some cookies to help feed them all.
We have dinner, dessert (Flaming Cherries Jubilee, which Step-Grandma spills on the tablecloth providing a VERY impressive Christmastime pyrotechnic display!) and coffee. People start to leave, and then my mom decides it's time for us to head home, too. We get our coats, and say goodbye to everyone. As we are getting into the car, I literally YELP. MY COOKIES! I rush back inside and grab the tin from the counter. Step-Grandma was mortified. Unbeknownst to me, when you bring cookies to someone's house, you're supposed to LEAVE them there! Was she CRAZY?????? Did she have any idea how many hours it took me to decorate those????? And so the remaining 4.5 dozen cookies came back home with me. :-).
As you can see in the above picture, while I still love my sugar cookies, I am now less inclined to reach for the royal icing. And Williams-Sonoma makes really pretty sprinkles!
Happy Holidays, everybody.
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