One dark and stormy night...no, that's another story...When I was a little girl, I was surrounded by my female relatives: grandmother, great aunts, aunts, first cousins, second cousins, third cousins, and women who weren't blood relations but were addressed with the title of "aunt". When the holidays came, they cooked and cooked and cooked. It started before Thanksgiving with the annual night of cranberry sauce-making (a messy affair) and just went on from there. Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas dinner differed only by one factor: dessert. Thanksgiving was for pies and Christmas was for cookies. The dessert worlds were not allowed to collide!!!
Sometime around the second week of December, the Christmas cookie making process would begin. I don't remember the order but the baking consisted of a number of different kinds of cookies with the crowning glory being the "Gingies" which were a large soft gingerbread cookie that was rolled, cut, baked, cooled and frosted. This whole shebang took three nights to pull off. The first night was the mixing of the dough which needed a night to rest. The second night involved the rolling, cutting and baking after which the cookies were set on the dining room table on large sheets of waxed paper to cool and then on the third night, we tackled the decorating.
The decorating of the Gingies was a very elaborate process. Several colors of icing were mixed: red, green, yellow, blue and white. The icing was confectioner's sugar with a bit of milk and vanilla. At our disposal were different colored sugars, sprinkles and small silver balls that were like BB's and were used to top the christmas trees and as the clapper for the bells. After the base icing was applied, next came the sugar and sprinkles. Then, someone with a good steady hand would take up the charge of outlining the cookies with white icing in a pastry bag. The santa was especially heavy on the outlining. He needed to be completely outlined and given a beard. The cookies were beautiful and delicious and to this day, I've not encountered anything like them anywhere else. I still make them although not every year. The memory of making those cookies is one the strongest Christmas memories I have from my childhood.
The cookies were packed up in old tins with waxed paper and sequestered to the basement of the house. Each day during the holiday season, enough cookies were procured for the day. Of course, I also took extra trips to the basement and helped myself.
When I was 14, my mother remarried and set up house with her new husband. My mother was a fiend for cooking and would often binge on making particular things. How well I remember the "chocolate mousse summer"!!!! She could get crazed over cookie making at Christmas. Whereas my grandmother ritualistically made the same few, but excellent, recipes each year, my mother would try scads of new recipes and her basement was full of a wild assortment of all kinds of treats. I am not kidding when I say that one year there must have been a dozen different types of cookies stashed in the basement, all in large quantities. And, they were all pretty good. Two in particular stand out in my mind: cream wafers and the brazil nut cookies. I have the recipes for both of them. The cream wafers were a buttery, simple sandwich cookie with a yummy cream center. The brazil nut cookies were a complex, layered cookie that involved a buttery crust, a creamy orange filling, and a nut topping.
After I married, I was then exposed to my mother-in-law's repertoire. Her cooking style followed my grandmother's: a set of tried and true recipes that she'd been making for years. Her iced butter cookies were TO DIE FOR. And, then there were the peanut butter balls...lord, have mercy, I went wild over those too. And, from those years, I acquired those recipes and still make them.
So, this last weekend of cookie making with my SO and his gang, I channeled all of these memories and influences as I moved through the process of producing Peanut Butter Kiss cookies (thanks to my aunt), iced butter cookies and peanut butter balls (thanks to my former mother-in-law), chocolate chip cookies (thanks to my grandmother), and something new, lemon bars for my SO (thanks to my mother for teaching me to always break tradition at least a bit).
My SO complimented me late on Saturday afternoon when the gang was leaving, each with a large container of cookies, on how everything had gotten done and worked out well. I smiled and said, "Thanks...I've been to this rodeo before."
Of course, you can see that the thanks belongs to all those dear women who showed me how, each with their own process and style. I am so grateful to have had all of those experiences.
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