Passing on the family recipes.

[rivka]

We made cookies tonight, primarily to be presents for Alex's nursery school teachers and my coworkers. I remember thinking that Alex might be old enough to help last Christmas, and having her be totally uninterested. This year, "Shall we make some cookies?" propelled her right out of a bad mood and into a state of high excitement.

I made some brown sugar/walnut cookies (not much to look at, but totally yummy) and some snickerdoodles. Snickerdoodles, rolled in red and green sugar crystals instead of the more traditional cinnamon sugar, are the archetypal Christmas cookie in my family. When I was not much older than Alex, I started being repsonsible for rolling the cookies in the colored sugar before they were baked. Now it's her turn.

Watch on YouTube

To be honest, I felt tired and queasy this evening and would not have picked it for cookie-baking had there been alternatives. (We need to give them out on Friday, and tomorrow night we have Avenue Q tickets.) But baking with Alex was a pleasure all the same. I spent so much happy childhood time baking with my own mother. It feels good to carry on the tradition.

Comments

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Oh, those look so much yummier than traditional Christmas cookies!

Maybe by "just plain" she meant regular white sugar instead of coloured sugar?

-J

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Oh, those look so much yummier than traditional Christmas cookies!

When you say "traditional Christmas cookies," what kind are you thinking of?

Maybe by "just plain" she meant regular white sugar instead of coloured sugar?

Maybe. I probably should've let her just bake one plain so she could see how it would turn out. It's hard not to be controlling when I'm in the middle of a project.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

When you say "traditional Christmas cookies," what kind are you thinking of?

Sugar cookies. With coloured frosting.

-J

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Those aren't my tradition, at all. My tradition is gingerbread, merengues, and shortbread.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

...which would also be preferable to sugar cookies with coloured frosting. :-)

-J

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

Where are you, and would you like some gingervegans? I have lots!

In my baking calendar, sugar cookies with coloured frosting are for for holidays that don't have their own cookies: Pride, Valentine's Day, sometimes Hallowe'en (because I have a pumpkin-shaped cookie cutter). I've never made them for Canada Day, because, for some reason, I've never baked cookies for Canada Day (probably because it's too darned hot for baking, but of course, I do bake for Pride. Huh. Oh well. I don't have a maple-leaf cookie cutter, so no Canada Day cookies.)

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

*blink* Are you seriously offering to send cookies to a complete stranger? My goodness. Are you some sort of goddess or something?

I am in Edmonton. If you're serious. Well...actually I'm here even if you're not. *g*

-J

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Cut into stars.

I remember our traditional dinosaur cutters weren't quite what you wanted!

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

They were awesome, though. I think dinosaurs should be part of every Christmas, really. For some peculiar reason the cinnamon-hazlenut cookie recipe is called "Cinnamon Stars" in every source I've ever found it in—the star shape seems to be part of the Platonic ideal of that cookie. I don't know why.

This year's gingervegans are, some of them, cats.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I loooove meringues, but I've never made them. They intimidate me.

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

I'm not always successful with them. I've learned a few things from the failures, though.

1) Use boxed egg whites or meringue powder, so you don't have to figure out what to do with all the yolks. Also, you don't have to bother with separating out yolks.

2) Don't even bother trying if it's humid or damp. The merengues will schlomp.

3) You always have to beat the egg whites + cream of tarter for longer than you think you have to.

4) Replacing half your sugar with icing sugar helps stabilize the egg whites.

5) Line your baking sheets with parchment.

6) Baking at lower temperatures for longer is a good idea—one recipe I've used has you more or less dry them out in a really slow oven (I think it started at 200ºF, then, after an hour or so, you turned the oven off) overnight.

I found this article in Fine Cooking really helpful, though I still put cinnamon, vanilla, and chocolate chips in my meringues (except for one batch, which are chocolate-free because certain people are not cocoavores.)

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Those were never a tradition in my house - I think because they're so much work. In the last few years, my sister Juanita has started making them every Christmas. Hers are really, really good, but they do still have the intense sweetness that is the hallmark of sugar cookies with colored frosting.

Canonical Christmas cookies in our family are snickerdoodles, these brown sugar/nut cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and spritz cookies dyed green with food coloring and shaped (in a cookie press) like Christmas trees. My sister-in-law has introduced yummy chocolate-dipped peanut butter balls called "buckeyes."

kcobweb's birthday is three days before Christmas, and she used to have a cookie decorating party every year. Words cannot describe the appallingness of the cookies we would create - you know, big gobs of frosting and piles of sprinkles and other doodads.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

Hey! We were like, 10.

Buckeyes..... I hadn't thought of those. I need to ask my mom to bring the recipe so's I can make 'em. They are definitely canonical. My family's list of canonical Christmas cookies is miles long. :)

Mom comes tomorrow and all she can talk about is making cookies with Elena. She has more patience than I.

[minnaleigh.livejournal.com]

The video was cute! She was very industrious with the coverage on that first cookie! Also, she's huge and grownup and adorable.

I remember those brown sugar walnut cookies and they are SO GOOD! Would you be willing to share the recipe?

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

I was thinking that, too: "My, how thorough!" *grin*

And I think Alex's speech is much clearer than I remember from the last videos. Yay for growing up!

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Fortunately, I pasted the recipe into my journal a couple of years ago. So it's right here all ready to share (http://rivka.livejournal.com/161866.html#cutid1). Looks like the time you had them, I used hazelnuts... which was probably even better than walnuts.

[minnaleigh.livejournal.com]

Yay! I'm planning to do some baking this weekend and I think I'll make some of these! And I've added that post to my memories so hopefully we won't have this exact same exchange a few years from now ;-)

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Looking back through my cooking posts, I found one about our crazy cinnamon-chip baking fest. Man, do I ever miss cinnamon chips.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

It looks to me like they still make and sell cinnamon chips. If they're not available in your area, I'll look around here and try to send you some. Unless there's another reason I've forgotten about that means you can't have them any more.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Really? Really?

Hey! Hershey has a product locator (http://www.hersheys.com/productlocator/index.asp), which informs me that they do sell cinnamon chips in the Baltimore area, but only at our least-favorite grocery chain. Wow! Thanks for alerting me to the fact that they haven't actually been discontinued! Cinnamon chips are wonderful!

Cinnamon chips

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Yay! Yes, I fully agree with you on cinnamon chips. I first used them in place of the butterscotch chips in this delicious recipe for nut bars. I'm looking forward to making your nut cookies!

Mixed Nut bars
1-1/2 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup margarine

Cut margarine into the flour,salt,brown sugar. Press in a 9x13 pan. Bake 10 min. at 350 degrees.

1 6 oz.pkg butterscotch chips
2 tblsp. butter
1/2 cup white corn syrup
2 cups mixed nuts

Melt chips,butter,syrup over low heat or microwave.

Spread mixed nuts over baked crust and pour melted topping over nuts.

Bake 10 min @350 degrees.

Re: Cinnamon chips

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Those look gooood!

minnaleigh and I especially enjoyed this cinnamon chip-applesauce coffee cake (http://www.cooksrecipes.com/breakfast/cinnamon_chip_applesauce_coffeecake_recipe.html).

[minnaleigh.livejournal.com]

That was so much fun! I still have one hoarded bag but I can't decide what to make with it.

You know, my friend Tina found them at Wegman's a couple of years ago. Now that you have a Wegman's in your area, you might get lucky!

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I just discovered that Hershey has a product locator! (http://www.hersheys.com/productlocator/index.asp) You can plug in your zip code to find a local source. It looks as though, in Gaithersburg as well as in Baltimore, they only sell them at Giant.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I could pick some up for you at the local Giant if you'd like. I still need to get your Hogfather DVDs to you.

Yay! Baking with Alex!

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

I'm mid-bake (actually decorating, right now), preparing cookies to take into the admin assistants at the College* and having fond childhood memories of baking with my grandmom (I used to spend a weekend baking at her house, every year starting when I was about 10, doing the Christmas cookies.) One of my very early memories is of carefully dipping a fork in flour to use it to smoosh the peanut-butter cookies. Not having kids of my own, I was all excited about the prospect of baking with the Wee Mushroom Lad this year, but it's looking like there won't be time—I'm not going to see him before he goes to his mom's for Christmas. His dad baked chocolate snowballs with him, and they are yummy.

* Who are awesome and were wonderful about last-minute print-jobs and photocopies for me this semester.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

That's a lovely family tradition to carry on.

I'm Danish, so my archetypal christmas cookies are traditional (http://web.jamver.id.au/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/wiki/BruneKager)Danish (http://web.jamver.id.au/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/wiki/PeberNoedder) recipes, but I started making snickerdoodles a few years ago and they definitely taste christmassy to me (although that does require the cinnamon), and with time, they may become part of my family's christmas traditions.

[saoba.livejournal.com]

Awwww!

And you distracted her quite neatly with the 'red snow'.

[bosssio.livejournal.com]

yah for making cookies. I try to make cookies with the boys but:

a. i get quite anal about my baking and it can lead to all sorts of shouting if flour goes in too early, etc.

b. with two of them (esp Liam), it gets rather hectic.

I baked gingerbread tonight - I had no idea how freakin' easy gingerbread is. Complete with royal icing frosting, they are very traditional german type cookies.

I love christmas cookies.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I am making traditional Christmas cakelings, for rysmiel to take to work tomorrow for the team, and for our neighbours. I'm doing a dozen with banana, a dozen with jam, a dozen with chocolate chips, a dozen plain to be iced, and a dozen chocolate to be chocolate covered. There won't be any left, but I expect I'll have made some more by the time you come.

Cookies are not part of our tradition, I think they're North American.

What's funny is how different the things I feel I really have to have are from Z's, considering that he's spent every Christmas of his life with my traditions. The first year Ken wasn't going to be with us for Christmas, I said I wouldn't have to make a nut-roast -- a vegetarian, um, thing. (Don't worry. There will be some.) Z was horrified to the point of chin-quivering. Nut-roast had become for him not a thing that was there so vegetarians had some alternative to roast goose, but a required addition to the Christmas special food. The other thing he absolutely has to have are mince pies, which I don't even like, which are a pain to make because they require a special extra-hard pastry, and which every year I struggle over.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

In college, my housemates and I used to host big potluck Thanksgiving dinners. Everyone had a dish that simply couldn't be left out, and it was fascinating to see how much the required dishes diverged from people's normal eating habits. The two that stand out most in my mind were a repellent "salad" made from pistachio pudding, whipped topping, and canned pineapple - the makers, two sisters, insisted that it was a salad and not a dessert - and the bowl of pitted canned black olives, designed to be worn on the fingers before eating.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Words cannot express how much it delights me to hear of someone else with the Thanksgiving tradition of wearing pitted canned black olives on one's fingers before eating them. It's the only form of "playing with your food" that I can remember being allowed at the holiday table. While it started as a Thanksgiving tradition when I was a tot, I quickly pushed my advantage and it became a staple item at every holiday dinner.

I'm the youngest of three, but I think I originated the olive tradition at our table. I must ask my older sister; she has a good memory for these things.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

We were only allowed to play with the olives from the can in the kitchen, but we did put them on our fingers.

As to the pistachio salad, my mother's Cranberry Salad was frequently mistaken for a dessert.

[redbird]

You and Z have converted me to mince pies, and one of these years I'll try making my own.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I remember when I was two, sitting on the corner of the counter and picking up the snickerdoodle balls and rolling them in the cinnamon and sugar.

Our traditional cookies were spritz (http://busycooks.about.com/od/cookierecipes/r/rosettes.htm) which you make in different shapes with a cookie press. I was never strong enough to actually press the plunger in, so Dad had to do that, and he'd say he did all the making. But what we gave in tins to friends and coworkers was Nuts and Bolts, which is a Chex cereal mixture that's nothing like what they say is the "original recipe." I used to make a dozen or so batches of those in roasting pans.

Cookie video

[hazelchaz]

Excellent fun. Yes, you should have let her do a "plain" one... well, something for next time.

Hope you do a video every year, it would make a nice little library to look back on when she's bigger.

Re: Cookie video

[hazelchaz]

But get yourself in the shot sometime, please?

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

So cute. I totally would have rushed to get her some white (or tan) sugar for her "just plain" batch. ;-)