The Great Christmas Cookie Adventure

I know my way around a kitchen. There's a big sheaf of ribbons--mostly blue--for my cooking and baking hanging in the corner of the kitchen. I also got my grandmother's and great-aunt's recipe collections when they died, so I have multiple generations of recipes, especially cookie recipes.

Just like Christmas, Christmas cookies are a big deal in my family. Everybody has their favorites, there's a lot of entertaining, and naturally, I make nearly every "favorite cookie." I don't make small batches--most of these make 3-10 dozen, so by Christmas, I have a dining room full of tins of Christmas cookies, most of which will be eaten or given away before New Year's. I used to make several kinds of candy, too; that has stopped, as the weather is always a bit "iffy" around Christmas, and candy doesn't respond well to "iffy."

This year's great Christmas cookie adventure had to be in two parts, as I had a Christmas party to attend early in December, then I had to concentrate on work until the 19th. The first big "bake" included some of my favorites, along with mixing up the dough for the Christmas fruit cookies, a long-time, often-requested favorite of nearly everybody. For the first big bake, there were:

• Georgia's Cookies (a kind of brown-sugar shortbread with pecans)
• Spritz Cookies
• Mincemeat Cookies
• Christmas Fruit Cookies (a refrigerator cookie full of nuts and dried and candied fruit)
  

This year, I found a nice 9x13" shallow basket that serves as a perfect cookie transport and serving device. All it needed was a large towel folded in the bottom, then a fancy"Christmas" towel for the cookies to rest on until they were gobbled up. The first basketful of cookies went off to a potluck Christmas party, and came home nearly empty.

The second big bake was Christmas Eve, as the time until Christmas was drawing to a close. This was a "scary big" bake, so I could wrap up everything before Christmas Day. The day before, I had mixed up the doughs that needed chilling, so Christmas Eve I started early and worked hard, cranking out as many cookies as I could. This marathon cookie baking was interrupted only by a batch of jelly for Christmas gifts, but it was a nice break, because baking pan after pan of cookies gets old after six hours. For this bake, I turned out:

• Christmas Fruit Cookies
• Brown-eyed Susans (a short cookie with a Hershey's Kiss in the middle)
• Striped Susans (the same cookie but with Hershey's Hugs)
• Anise Drops
• Spritz Cookies
• Festive Cookies (my grandmother's name for Mexican Wedding Cakes or Russian Tea Cakes)
• Santa's Whiskers (another sliced refrigerator cookie that is rolled in coconut)
• Lebkuchen
• and a batch of scones for breakfast

Making Lebkuchen is...interesting. The dough, full of nuts, candied citron, molasses, honey, and spices, is incredibly sticky, so there's a lot of flouring surfaces to keep the dough from sticking to everything. Flouring surfaces means everything is covered in flour, especially your intrepid author--I had flour in my hair, all over me, and I finally had to kick off my clogs and work in my bare feet, as I was starting to slide around on the floury floor. However, I got the little cookies, cut in the shape of hearts with an old canape cutter, into the oven and baked. So far, so good!

I hit a snag when I tried to glaze the lebkuchen. The "original recipe brought from Germany," which is identical to the recipe in my Betty Crocker cookbook, calls for making a sugar syrup, then adding confectioner sugar and glazing the cookies while hot. This was fraught with disaster, as I needed to create basically a candy syrup (cooked to soft ball stage) in the middle of a rainstorm, and the results were somewhat less than what I wanted. OK...take a deep breath and try option two: a thin confectioner sugar-water glaze. Better, but still not perfect. I had to settle for that, however, as I was running out of time. Later, my palate memory finally identified the taste as the wonderful "molasses" Christmas cookie my mother's close friend made when I was small. She finely ground the hazelnuts and candied citron, used cookie cutters to create fancy shapes, and then frosted them with regular cookie frosting and sprinkles. Ah-ha! The next batch (there's still dough in the refrigerator), will be frosted just as Mrs. Weaver's cookies were.

I finished the last batch of cookies around supper time, and Stephen chased me out of the kitchen to make us soup and sandwiches for dinner. Not fancy, but wonderful after a day spent up to my elbows in butter, flour, sugar, and spices. The dining room is full of cookies, the refrigerator is full of cookie dough, and I'm feeding all my friends cookies for the near future!