The weather outside is Southern California’s version of frightful today (rainy), and that is absolutely perfect! While it’s damp and drizzly out there, inside my home it’s going to be warm and sunny!
Why?
Today I honor tradition and open Santa’s Bakery for 2009.
Every year my Mom baked the most tasty delicacies ever, a treat simply referred to as “Christmas Cookies”. The recipe has been passed down through at least 4 generations of my father’s family, this baker being the 4th generation, and it’s just not Christmas if these cookies aren’t tickling our tastebuds.
For me the tradition of these cookies goes beyond their taste – a lot of the tradition is in making them. The dough needs to be made stiff enough that it rolls out nearly paper thin yet moist enough that it can withstand the constant addition of more flecks of flour. Once the right consistency is achieved, the true “fun” begins.
Flour the counter and the rolling pin; roll out the dough to a 6-8″ circle then flip over and continue rolling out to needed depth; dip cookie cutter edge in flour then press into dough 12 or 18 times, placing shapes as close together as possible; pull up extra dough from around the shapes; using a metal spatula that has also been run through flour, carefully place the shapes on a foil covered cookie sheet; spread egg on top of the shapes with a pastry brush; decorate with colored sugar and/or colored balls then bake for 8 minutes (switching trays at the 4 minute mark to avoid burnt bottoms in the lower cookie tray).
Repeat dozens and dozens (and dozens) of times!
Throughout this day I will have many flashbacks of this baking tradition as it happened during my childhood years. There are those that are already running through my head – my Dad sitting at the kitchen table egging and decorating the cookies (a job we kids shared once we were old enough); my Mom wiping her forehead with the back of her floured hand; the clickety-clack of the cookie cutters as Mom dipped them in flour before using them in the dough; seeing my Mom’s fingers as they trace the outline of the cookie cutter, ensuring a clean cut in the dough, and of course, we kids stealing bits of raw anise-flavored dough to nibble on, long before it was unhealthy to eat anything with raw eggs. Then there will be those flashbacks that surprise me, those memories that are buried so deep yet close enough to the surface to spring forth once triggered…
Last year I checked with my siblings and my father and asked their permission to inherit Mom’s cookie cutter collection as well as her aluminum cookie press, offering to share any cookie cutters with my siblings that had special meaning to them. There was not a single objection to my bringing these items to CA, and I was thrilled. Though I had some of my own cookie cutters, the Christmas Cookies are not the same for me if they’re not made with the cutters that have been used for as long as I can remember. And these cutters absolutely need to be stored in that same red cardboard box that my Mom stored them in…the box that when stumbled upon in July would send my tastebuds into overdrive. Fitting the dozens of different size, shape and depth cutters back into this box so the lid will close has always required as much patience and stamina as making the cookies themselves…
For me this tradition is not yet complete as I am missing three key components, all of which I will adopt at some point in the future. The first is the very large frosted pink bowl that my Mom used to make the dough. This bowl was only used once a year so when it was on the counter I knew what was coming next. The second is the red handled serated cutter my Mom used to make the scraps. When the dough will no longer roll out correctly or when exhaustion has set in, whichever comes first, the dough is rolled out for a final time and this cutter is used to make straight horizontal and vertical wavy lines. Each square is a cookie and afforded all the decorating like the shaped counterparts. The third is the large glass Mr. Peanut jar and lid that sits on top of the hutch at my parents’ house. Years and years ago it contained peanuts and sat on a store shelf in a store my Dad’s parents ran, but throughout my life, it sat on the top shelf of the hutch and was home to Christmas Cookies.
By the time Santa’s Bakery closes today I will have at least 30-40 dozen Christmas Cookies!! Many will be given as gifts but hopefully there will be lots for me to enjoy. I promise that I will follow tradition and not eat any shaped cookies until Christmas day. I will however enjoy the scraps between now and then. As for the balance of the cookies that I keep? They are still as yummy on day 360 as they are on day 1, however I know myself very well and there’s not even the slighest possibility that any cookie I make today will still be hanging around when day 50 arrives never mind day 360!
After an evening of well-deserved lounging on the sofa, enjoying wine and a dinner that is made for me (either a Subway sub or a pizza), tomorrow will herald the reopening of Santa’s Bakery, though for just a few hours, not an entire day.
Tomorrow I will bake the pressed cookies. These are vanilla cookies that are run through a cookie press – not a plastic press like currently available, but my Mom’s alumimun press with real metal shape pieces!
Three batches of the cookie dough are made – one has red food coloring added, the second has green added and the third is colorless. All three doughs are put into the press, each taking up a vertical 1/3 of space so when the handle is turned and the cookies come out, they are tri-colored!
There are easy shapes and there are tough shapes. The wreath, tree and clover are the most difficult as invariably a piece of dough refuses to fall off the press and onto the cookie sheet. The heart and the flower are the easiest…all others fall somewhere in the middle.
Tomorrow I will share photos, cookie totals and baking tales with you. Unfortunately WordPress does not offer a “scratch-n-sniff” option so you won’t be able to smell all these goodies 
But maybe that’s not a bad thing ‘cuz if you smelled them you’d want to eat them!
Enjoy your Saturday everyone!! I’ll be back when the bakery is closed!
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