By NANCY JANE KERN
SOME YEARS AGO I received a shiny new KitchenAid stand mixer for Christmas, arriving in plenty of time to make Christmas cookies (I think this gift came with an ulterior motive). Allrecipes.com is a great site for recipes and cooking tips so it was the first place searched. One of my favorite cookies is oatmeal, and I found a five-star recipe that became more expensive and complicated than the basic one I remembered from 4-H. Butter was melted and cooled, unsalted raw pecans were pan-roasted and cooled, then chopped, eggs were brought to room temperature, and raisins were soaked in the beaten eggs to plump them. The mixer worked perfectly, and the cookies were scrumptious. I particularly enjoyed using the pour shield which kept me from getting flour all over the kitchen. There were requests for more cookies which were encouraging.
Next was a more basic version using good old Quaker Oats, regular Sun-maid Raisins, and most ingredients were just dumped into the mixer bowl and mixed. My kind of cookie, at half the cost, time, and stress. Others didn’t care for them and preferred the fussy ones. Next were cranberry orange goodies. Expensive oranges were zested and juiced; fresh cranberries were hand-chopped (couldn’t locate the Cuisinart electric chopper). These tasted great. There were some leftover Valatie’s Tierra Farm super good pecan halves, so they decorated the next batch which were sugar cookies (the colored sugar was hiding somewhere). These were pretty good. I started thinking about childhood Christmas cookies which were wonderful memories.
My mother always baked the same cookie recipe every year, consisting mostly of flour and a little sugar. It probably came from a frugal WWII Betty Crocker recipe. They were rolled out and large cookie cutters were used to stamp them out. After baking and cooling they got a coating of hand-stirred white confectioners’ sugar frosting with just a drop of the expensive vanilla. These fairly hard cookies took longer to eat so one was usually enough. Tiny red cinnamon candies were a nice addition, though somewhat frightful as angel eyes. The shiny little silver beads were treacherous tooth breakers and were picked off or swallowed whole.
These cookies were made with love, and we loved them. My maternal grandfather, Frank Wambach, was from a German family and liked springerle cookies for Christmas. My grandmother made them and added caraway seeds. She had a very old wooden rolling pin with traditional carved-out patterns. I liked the dove. It was rolled over the cookie dough, then the cookies were cut into squares along the border lines. They were very pretty, smelled like anise, and were as hard as ceramic tiles (Gram made really good molasses cookies). She may have used my mother’s cookie recipe, or possibly her English ancestry was incompatible with German baking. Fortunately, my grandfather loved them. They were kept in a crock until summer and weren’t too bad if you soaked them in warm milk. The cookie scene vastly improved when my uncle married a superb baker. Aunt Mary took great pride in her Christmas cookies which were varied and scrumptious. Her small round butter cookies were the best. Mine will never be as good as hers, but if I practice enough, who knows? She certainly would be pleased to be remembered during this Christmas season.
