christmas cookies with the hollenbachs
i had forgotten how a scent can trigger a memory. this weekend, i experienced a moment of such pure scent memory that i felt surprised then all warm and fuzzy inside. it started with grandma betty’s sugar cookies which i was looking forward to making all week – even though it felt like events were consipiring to keep me from it.
i finally got around to making the dough on friday night, but it didn’t really look like i recalled. it was much more shaggy looking. being the dutiful recipe follower, i popped it into the refrigerator to cool and came back to it on saturday. i had stored it in discs like below:
when i started to unwrap the disc, i was hit by the smell that i recalled so strongly from childhood cookie decorating. i couldn’t believe i’d forgotten it and i was giddy as i started to roll out the dough. it truly felt like christmas in the house.
what i didn’t recall was how sticky this dough can be. in the process of making my own betty cookies, i learned a few things that were not in the book:
- the dough is crazy sticky and i finally understood what “well floured surface meant”. i dumped about 1/2 to 1 cup of flour in the middle of my island, formed the dough into a ball, and started rolling from there. if the dough continued to move freely, i had enough flour. if it did not, i had a sticky mess on my hands. see below how nice that looks rolled and cut? that was my sticky mess that i had to scrape off in order to start over.
- buy a bench scraper. 2.50 at sur la table. i’m sure there are more expensive or better versions but this was terrific. it saved me much frustration as i did have a few issues with rolling out the dough, as well as making it easier to pick up the cookies with smushing them.
- make sure you have cookie cutters. i thought i had the classics: a tree, a snowman, snowflakes, a candy cane. turns out i had multiple snowflakes, a snowman, and gingerbread people. not having a tree was bizarre – though we had plenty of snowflakes!
- you may think you can decorate the cookies without accoutrements like sprinkles. you’re wrong. pay the $5 for the multipack and you’ll be glad you did.
- decorating cookies is fun! do not be like me and wait too long so your cookies look like a 5-year-old decorated them while your boyfriend’s look awesome because he took his time. you can guess which are mine….
we took the finished product to our 2012 secret santa with the seattle hollenbachs and talked about how they made the same cookies growing up. it hadn’t occurred to me that we’d have this shared memory as we did not really see them much when we were kids. we took along extras for them to have as well as some dough for the newest seattle hollenbach to try his hand at decorating. next year, we’re planning to have our own decorating party before dinner which should be loads of fun – messy, messy fun!
