The 12 Posts of Christmas, Day 8: Memories of Christmas Cookie Baking

Inside: Fondly I’m reposting my memories of Christmas cookie baking. Feel free to enjoy with a glass of milk and some icing-glazed confections!

Cookies from Christmases past. — I never met a Christmas cookie I didn’t like.

Baking With Granny

I never met a Christmas cookie I didn’t like. It’s true. That said, early on I had the opportunity. . .

Granny and baking. For those of us in the family, I don’t need to say anything more. You know the different choices you have when broiling a steak? Well, Gran applied that to baking, and she leaned toward the “well done” side of things. But she had the patience to roll out sugar cookie dough, break out her festive cookie cutters, and let us grandkids have at it. She also made powdered sugar icing and colored it with food coloring. Aside: One year she was out of red, and I remember her turning to me and saying, “If there’s a will, there’s a way.” She then proceeded to take a bowl of pickled beets from the refrigerator (she never had more than ten items in her fridge, nor did my other grandma, for some strange reason) and spoon out a little juice to color the icing. Believe it or not, you couldn’t taste the beets.

Year after year she’d hold this special day of cookie baking and decorating her trees–one an artificial green pine, the other one of those obnoxious silver aluminum jobs that every family owned in the late 60s and 70s. (Karl, do you remember that tree?) Mom and my aunts would drop off children, and while Granny wasn’t especially gifted with baking, she knew how to wrangle a group of kids and keep them on task until everything was done. All the while Bing crooned Christmas tunes in the background, compliments of her record player.

Good times, those were. . .

Cookie Creator?

In my early teen years I began clipping recipes and actually created my first recipe, which was a chocolate cookie, just in time for Christmas. I remember receiving rave reviews, but to be honest, I thought it was ho-hum. Don’t know if I still have a copy in my recipe box (remember those?) or not.

A few years later, I remember sampling from a container of assorted cookies some young newlyweds had made for my parents. (They didn’t have much money, so they baked cookies for gifts.) Within the confines of that decorative box sat the most delicious of Christmas cookies I’ve ever eaten. A wonderful round white ball that tasted of pecans with a dusting of powdered sugar, and there started a love affair that exists to this day. I didn’t know what they were called at the time, but I urged Mom to ask her young friend. “Russian Teacakes,” Rosalie told her. I must have asked for the recipe as well–no Internet to consult in those days–and from then on I have made them.

By the time I met my husband, with all of this baking experience (yeast breads included), I thought I was a pretty good cook.

And then I met my mother-in-law.

Making Cookies With Margaret

I wouldn’t say making cookies with my mother-in-law Margaret was fun. She was a perfectionist, and coming from Germany, our American ingredients just didn’t cut it. For one thing, they have this product over there she called vanilla sugar, and she had to go to a specialty store, with imported goods from her homeland, to buy it. She also didn’t like our butter. Margaret complained, saying that she and Oma (her mother) couldn’t understand why we Americans put salt in ours.

Still, with all the “bellyaching” as she called it, I sampled some really good cookies, one of which I’d place in my top five–Nutballs. (I’m attempting to remake the recipe so it will be Keto friendly. Tune in later this week.) Mike’s favorite they called Vanillas. You might know them as Vanilla Crescents. She also did some hazelnut cookies, but, sadly, her own recipes were lost when she passed away. Oh how I wish I had pressed her for them!

Cookies Through the Years

Since my early married days, I’ve baked cookies for Christmas for the family, for giving gifts, and for the people in my husband’s department. That last tradition started because Mike, when directing tv cameras during the Christmas service, would inevitably get so caught up in the Christmas production that he’d raise his voice and come across as irritated. So I would bake a large tin of Russian Teacakes for his volunteers as a way to soften the blow. (His people were great–they understood his, er, excitement.) The teacakes were much appreciated, despite the powdered sugar trail left behind by these wonderful cookies. At some point I started baking another recipe for Christmas production weekend that was a particular favorite of Mike’s. They’re called Chocolate-covered Cherry Cookies, but we loving referred to them as Atomic Cookies because the cherry gelatin called for in the recipe turns them a bright pinkish-red. In the last couple of years, though, I’ve filled in with break apart pre-made cookie dough. (Shh. . . Don’t tell.) I also use that for little gifts for delivery truck drivers who frequent the snowy roads in my neck of the woods around this time of year.

Nowadays I spend the week before Christmas doing most of my baking. This year I’m trying a couple of Keto cookie recipes for the Vanilla Crescents and the Russian Teacakes (aka Snowballs). Mom’s been baking as well and can’t wait to make her Gooey Butter Cake cookies, among other favorites. They’re pretty tasty, I must say.

Now you’ll have to excuse me. I’ve got some dough to mix up. (Or cookies to break apart.) Either way, I know they’ll be good.

What’s not to like? They’re Christmas cookies, for goodness sake!