Jaci Dawn

There are a lot of reasons to like Christmas. Nativity sets, light displays, carols, finding the perfect gift for someone, Christmas cards, and memories.

As I wrote that, I was reminded of the Christmas my grandfather Wilcox died. My dad had to make the trip to Idaho to take care of the details and for the funeral. Dad wasn’t due to be home until late on Christmas day. My brother, my sister and I all decided to wait for him. So the stockings hung and the presents stayed wrapped until Dad drove up late in the afternoon.

He would never admit it, but I think Dad was touched that we wanted to have Christmas together as a family, and that we understood he’d just buried his own father so the connection was that much more poignant.

But that isn’t where I was going. I was going to tell you about cookies. Because cookies are an integral part of Christmas. Cookies, fudge, candy, bread, pies: anything that makes you gain five pounds just by looking at it.

Some of my favorite memories are centered around cookies. I especially loved the tradition of rolled sugar cookies with powdered sugar frosting.

I use the Butter Cooky recipe from the classic Betty Crocker cook-book:

Mix together thoroughly:

1 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

stir in:

3 tsp vanilla

sift together & stir in (will have to knead some):

3 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

Wrap in plastic and refrigerate at least an hour.

These bake at 425 degrees (F) for 5 minutes and before I take you to the next step, I think it is fair to warn you that it is best if you have several cooky tins ready to go and then concentrate only on the baking. Because at 5-6 minutes, these babies are prime. At 8 minutes and they’re turning brown. Ten minutes and they’re burnt. Crisp.

My mom would roll them out when we were at school and she’d artistically paint them with egg yolk paint tinted with a little food coloring: 1 egg yolk + 2 T water. As we got older and wanted to help decorate them, she abandoned the artistic end of things and went with powdered sugar frosting.

So the dough is chilled through. Take one-fourth of it and roll it out very thin (1/16″). Cut with cooky cutters and put on ungreased cooky tins. Don’t try to keep rolling & cutting while baking, tho – you’ll lose track of time and you’ll burn a batch. I promise.

Right as the edges begin to brown, remove from the oven and slide cookies carefully onto a kitchen towel to cool. Do several batches this way before you think about decorating or cleaning up or… Because the minute you look away from that oven… SMOKE!

I rolled out 7 dozen cookies on Sunday and lost one dozen (yep, I started doing something and wasn’t watching that clock…).

To decorate: a little milk, a tsp of vanilla and powdered sugar, mixed thick. A couple drops of food coloring. One the frosting hardens, you can stack these cookies.

As you can see, I started out being very artistic. The cookies are sweet by themselves and don’t need much frosting – just enough to make them lively.

I got to this point after everyone came home on Sunday. Arwen leaned over my shoulder and looked at that evil-looking teddy bear in the lower right and said, “Grandma’s getting tired.”

I ate that teddy bear, by the way. Wouldn’t want my grandson to see it and be traumatized.

I collect cooky cutters. So I have a nice variety of shapes. I decided I need a camel. I think my mom had a camel. {Aside: Terry (that’s my brother and he reads my blog): I get Mom’s cooky cutters. At least the camel.}

These are very thin, very addicting and very yummy. The ingredient label (if there was one) would be: butter, sugar, powdered sugar, flour, vanilla, egg, baking powder. Lots of butter & sugar. Real health food.

But, hey, it’s Christmas.

Don’t forget the sprinkles.