I am taking a trip back through time to remember Christmases past by highlighting the various holiday goodies my family has enjoyed over the years.
A lot of my holiday memories revolve around food, especially sweets. I think that can probably be said by many of us. Christmastime, in general, is a time of excess & over indulgence, as well as a time for giving. When you combine all of that, you get millions of people making & sharing food as an act of love. And I think most of us on the receiving end are happy to oblige.
My love of holiday treats all started with the humble, ubiquitous sugar cookie—a holiday staple in millions of American homes. And my home was no different; Mom faithfully churned them out each year. Of course, I always helped with cutting out the various shapes with Mom’s trusty old aluminum cookie cutters—Christmas trees, Santa laden with his bag of toys, stars, & bells. And of course I would also help with—badly—frosting & decorating them with sprinkles.
Sugar cookies have never been my favorite treat; that spot would be reserved for something chocolatey. They are, however, the ever-present taste of Christmas. I don’t necessarily get excited for them, but the holidays would not be right without them. I feel bad saying that about these reliable treats; it’s not their fault that I’m a certified chocoholic. On the other hand, they are one of Santa’s favorites and, therefore, need no pity from me.
I remember the first time I decided to make the Christmas sugar cookies back in 2008. My mom gladly handed me the reins. I always thought the cookies made from her recipe were a bit too dry. I had read somewhere that, instead of using flour, you could use powdered sugar for rolling out the dough. Great! Maybe the cookies wouldn’t be so dry if we used powdered sugar instead of flour.
Everything thing went very well, and soon enough I put the first tray into the oven. When it was time to check on them, I opened the oven door and literally screamed in surprise. The cookies grew three sizes that day. They were huge. I guess those dry cookies needed the extra flour after all. Afterwards, my daughter, Sam, & I had a good laugh, and I decided I did not want to assume the mantle of sugar cookie baker.
These days, Sam is the sugar cookie baker in the family, and I still help with—badly—frosting & decorating them with sprinkles. Yes, frosting. No tedious piping & flooding or elaborate decorations in our home! That method is for people who were gifted with fine motor skills. I am a clumsy, shaky perfectionist who tends to swear a lot when things aren’t going as planned. Instead, we opt for the less anxiety-inducing, sanity-preserving option of simple white frosting, some good ol’ McCormick food coloring, and festive sprinkles—just like when I was a kid.
I remember the first time Sam made sugar cookies. It was back in 2009, when she was a freshman in college. They were not for Christmas, however. Instead, she made Halloween cut-outs in the shape of ghosts, Jack O’Lanterns, cats, & bats. Her foray into the world of sugar cookies was a success:
If I remember correctly, it was the next year that Sam took the reins from my mom and became the Official Christmas Sugar Cookie Baker of the family. The funniest thing about this is that, while Sam started out as a baker, she actually does not like baking. Baking requires precision, and she dislikes fussing with measurements. But sugar cookies are one of the few exceptions she makes for the sake of tradition. It has become her Sacred Duty to the family; sadly, if she didn’t make them, no one would.
The recipe she used way back then is the same she uses today: The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies from AllRecipes.com. There is nothing fancy about this recipe. Why reinvent the wheel? They are just your standard rolled sugar cookies, and that is exactly why we love them. As for frosting, I just use whatever basic white frosting recipe that I happen to google that year. No matter the recipe, it’s always the same four ingredients: butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and maybe a bit of milk to get the right consistency for optimum spreadability.
As far as the cookie recipe, the only thing Sam does differently is that she grates some nutmeg into her dough. And that is because we both equate the taste of nutmeg with the holidays—eggnog and pumpkin pie, I suppose. I asked her how much nutmeg she adds, but she’s very much an “eyeball it” type of person, so she can’t say. She has that magical ability that good cooks always seem to have, where she just knows how much of something to add. All I can say is she adds just enough to give her cookies a hint of nutmeg in the background; her cookies definitely don’t taste like nutmeg.
Of course I can’t touch on our family’s sugar cookie tradition without mentioning the special ones Sam would make for my dad. Dad tended to like foods that were…well done, shall we say; the more carbon, the better. With that in mind, Sam would set aside her “rerun” dough—the dough that had already been rolled out a couple of times. Then she would roll it out thin, cut out star shapes—always the stars—and over-bake them. I would then put these special treats into a decorative bag tied with curling ribbon and promptly present them to Dad when we’d arrive on Christmas Eve.
So much has changed in my life over the past 50 years. My Christmases these days are worlds away from the ones I enjoyed as a child and young adult. Many of those with whom I shared the season have passed on, while others have grown and moved on, creating their own family traditions. That is just part of life. However, the one thing that hasn’t changed is that dependable plate of sugar cookies on our table each year during the Christmas season. May they continue to keep their well deserved spot in our Christmas treat lineup for years to come.
