Co-ooooooooooookie Christmas
I love baking. More specifically, I love the results of baking, especially when chocolate is involved.
There’s no better time to bake than the holidays. The cold weather begs you to fire up the oven. The grocery stores have big sales on baking ingredients in hopes that you’ll drop a Franklin or two on all the other holiday dinner paraphernalia from their store. Neighbors are constantly dropping off their baked good with the tacit expectation that you’ll return in kind. Joyous times.
I went Christmas cookie crazy a couple years ago. It was Abbie’s first Christmas and I knew lots of family members would be infatuated with our little screaming bundle of joy, so I’d need a really spectacular cookie spread to grab their attention. I made six kinds of cookies that year in between Abbie’s naps, and dutifully toted them to every holiday function to share in the cheer. I spent most of January eating what cookies I couldn’t give away, and when you have cookies you can’t give away in spite of the family with eight kids living next door, you know you made too many cookies.
I’ve tempered my cookie enthusiasm ever since. Even the World’s Greatest Cookie* loses its appeal after eating your two-dozenth cookie copy over the span of a month.** When everyone is bringing a dozen or eight to your function, you know you’ll have a few leftovers.
This year I limited myself to three batches of sweets, but two of them were super easy. I made the first batch a couple weeks ago. We had a children’s party thrown by Ellie’s employer to attend, and all employees were expected to bring a batch of cookies. Since Ellie sprung the cookie caveat on me at the last minute, I baked an easy M&M cookie with the green and red holiday pieces I had leftover in the freezer from last year. I baked them quickly with ingredients on hand and they were tasty. As a bonus, our cranky kids caused us to leave early, so I could “forget” my cookies on the table and not worry about leftovers.
The other easy batch is cupcakes. Last year, I bought a couple boxes of clearanced holiday cake mix with the intention of making them this year after noticing the mix doesn’t expire until March 2007. I opened the boxes, discovered they’re simply white cake mix with a packet of waxy red and green sprinkles to mix in right before baking. As I poured the mix into 48 wrappers, I felt ripped off mentally for buying a blatant add-on product, though I was glad that I paid half-price for the mix.
The third batch I made was kringla. This is a more difficult cookie with origins in Norway, specifically requested by Ellie because it reminds her of her childhood, growing up with dreams of living a Norwegian lifestyle. The recipe I used comes from an old family recipe, or at least that’s what the writer claimed when I found it on the Internet. It’s a difficult cookie because, instead of dumping it into 4x3 rows of balls on a cookie sheet immediately after mixing like a normal cookie, the dough must be refrigerated overnight, and rolled out cookie-by-cookie on a lightly floured surface because you do not want to bite into a heavily floured kringla. Each roll must then be shaped into figure-eights, which is the approximate number of hairs you’ll lose forming each cookie while a child screams at your feet. Abbie and Tory were thoughtful enough to play quietly and non-destructively in the living room during this delicate step, but Ian decided to crumple into a screaming ball of toddler fury as soon as the raw dough coated my hands.
Everything has turned out well so far. I have kringla in rough figure-eight shapes, cupcakes that aren’t too heavily burned, and no M&M cookies left. Now, as long as no one drops off cookies unexpectedly, I should be set.
* The chocolate chip cookie recipe on the can of butter flavored Crisco. Mmm.
** Well, a week. It was at least a half-week.
There’s no better time to bake than the holidays. The cold weather begs you to fire up the oven. The grocery stores have big sales on baking ingredients in hopes that you’ll drop a Franklin or two on all the other holiday dinner paraphernalia from their store. Neighbors are constantly dropping off their baked good with the tacit expectation that you’ll return in kind. Joyous times.
I went Christmas cookie crazy a couple years ago. It was Abbie’s first Christmas and I knew lots of family members would be infatuated with our little screaming bundle of joy, so I’d need a really spectacular cookie spread to grab their attention. I made six kinds of cookies that year in between Abbie’s naps, and dutifully toted them to every holiday function to share in the cheer. I spent most of January eating what cookies I couldn’t give away, and when you have cookies you can’t give away in spite of the family with eight kids living next door, you know you made too many cookies.
I’ve tempered my cookie enthusiasm ever since. Even the World’s Greatest Cookie* loses its appeal after eating your two-dozenth cookie copy over the span of a month.** When everyone is bringing a dozen or eight to your function, you know you’ll have a few leftovers.
This year I limited myself to three batches of sweets, but two of them were super easy. I made the first batch a couple weeks ago. We had a children’s party thrown by Ellie’s employer to attend, and all employees were expected to bring a batch of cookies. Since Ellie sprung the cookie caveat on me at the last minute, I baked an easy M&M cookie with the green and red holiday pieces I had leftover in the freezer from last year. I baked them quickly with ingredients on hand and they were tasty. As a bonus, our cranky kids caused us to leave early, so I could “forget” my cookies on the table and not worry about leftovers.
The other easy batch is cupcakes. Last year, I bought a couple boxes of clearanced holiday cake mix with the intention of making them this year after noticing the mix doesn’t expire until March 2007. I opened the boxes, discovered they’re simply white cake mix with a packet of waxy red and green sprinkles to mix in right before baking. As I poured the mix into 48 wrappers, I felt ripped off mentally for buying a blatant add-on product, though I was glad that I paid half-price for the mix.
The third batch I made was kringla. This is a more difficult cookie with origins in Norway, specifically requested by Ellie because it reminds her of her childhood, growing up with dreams of living a Norwegian lifestyle. The recipe I used comes from an old family recipe, or at least that’s what the writer claimed when I found it on the Internet. It’s a difficult cookie because, instead of dumping it into 4x3 rows of balls on a cookie sheet immediately after mixing like a normal cookie, the dough must be refrigerated overnight, and rolled out cookie-by-cookie on a lightly floured surface because you do not want to bite into a heavily floured kringla. Each roll must then be shaped into figure-eights, which is the approximate number of hairs you’ll lose forming each cookie while a child screams at your feet. Abbie and Tory were thoughtful enough to play quietly and non-destructively in the living room during this delicate step, but Ian decided to crumple into a screaming ball of toddler fury as soon as the raw dough coated my hands.
Everything has turned out well so far. I have kringla in rough figure-eight shapes, cupcakes that aren’t too heavily burned, and no M&M cookies left. Now, as long as no one drops off cookies unexpectedly, I should be set.
* The chocolate chip cookie recipe on the can of butter flavored Crisco. Mmm.
** Well, a week. It was at least a half-week.
posted by Matt at
11:44 PM
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