Cookies - December 13, 2023

 This Saturday, we will be having our "Christmas" dinner and some present exchange with just our immediate family, as two of them will be elsewhere in the province on the actual Christmas day. For that reason, I baked early and purchased early. On Monday night, we all gathered round to do what is now our annual decorating of gingerbread and sugar cookies. 

We are a funny, sarcastic, and traditional bunch, so when we do our cookie decorating, we see what we can create out of the traditional shapes of trees, bells, ornaments, holly, stars, candy canes. I am super prepared (ha!) with all of my technical decorating tools, those being little zip lock bags of coloured icing with the tip of the bag cut off, so you can "pipe" the icing, some sprinkles, and toothpicks for precision. I must say that this year's icing was superior to other years, so I have Tiktok and my daughter to thank for that. I also realized I am now out of green food colouring, so we had to make our own.

From the left is son, "soon"-to-be son-in-law, and daughter. They are all looking very dedicated to the task at hand. Christmas village is in the background (I went with three levels this year, and no Lego figures).

Catching husband in the act of eating one of the "allowed" cookies. I made other cookies for eating to preserve the ones we were currently working on. We had rum and eggnog whilst decorating.

Most of the gang. Phones were used for images to copy on the cookies.

As you can see, some cookies are traditional (stars, trees, present, ornament) and others are interpretive (snake, cat, skeleton, whatever that swirly white and green thing is...).

Cookie Monster is featured in the lower left (all the while, son complaining that we should have black icing), the Leg Lamp (minus the benefit of yellow icing) , and others. 

Things got a bit political, as some Canadians might recognize some symbols. I won't reveal which ones were celebrated and which ones were scoffed at. As well, please note the Canadian Tire symbol! The gnome cookie is an ode to daughter who despises all the gnome products out there ("friggin' gnomes"). 

Compliments to daughter who took things seriously at the end and created this beauty (there was another one in white and red). I told her it could be a side hustle if the need ever arose. 

The cookies were laid out to set and dry and are now safely packed away in the freezer for future eating. I really love these family times and am very fortunate to have my adult kids close by, as not everyone has this. I get a bit maudlin at this time of year and hope that in the future such traditions will continue within their own families and they will reminisce fondly. 

December 23, 2021

 The night of the Winter Solstice our immediate family gathered together to do some serious cookie decorating. We've enjoyed doing this (not on this date necessarily) for a few years now and it seems we are achieving new heights in our skills. 

Some of them are sarcastic and naughty, others are seriously pretty. Still others are flawed due to a misjudgment of how much frosting was coming out. 

Husband was quite tickled with his accomplishments on Patrick Star (from Spongebob Squarepants).

Meanwhile, the decorations are done in the house, the gifts are wrapped (well, the ones I'm responsible for, anyway - can't speak for husband and son), and I've done what is, I hope, the last of the food and drink buying. Even though it's only a little gathering of us instead of the big one, I still want to make it special. 

When the kids were young, husband always read "The Night Before Christmas" to them on Christmas Eve. Now it is displayed behind a piece that depicts Santa taking it easy in the aftermath. My mother gave each one of us (myself and siblings) one of these Santa figures (all the same), so this has seen many Christmases. Poor old guy has his gramophone horn broken off, but he is much loved and makes me think of my father who almost always had a cat perched on him when he sat down. 

Here is our tree, picture taken this morning, so not quite in its glory at night with lights twinkling and such. 

Please note the present placement. Yes, there is a large gap below the tree. Why, may you ask?

That is why. When we first placed a few presents under the tree, he actually got in there, nosed and shoved around and made himself an empty spot where he could lie. Rather than fight it, we've just made sure he has a spot now. 

Here is the better behaved other cat.

Calm, cool, collected, comatose.

Meanwhile, I don't think there has been a single fire in the woodstove that hasn't been directly supervised. (These next pictures are taken on separate occasions, same shirt, ha ha).

Today I shall pre-make a couple of things: green bean casserole, baked sweet potatoes. I hope you are all content in your Christmas preparations, or lack thereof, however you choose to wrap up this year. We have snow on the ground, with more to come. 

Mmm almond extract

 I tried a new cookie this year. They are called Italian Christmas cookies. I found the recipe on Pinterest but won’t bother including because I actually haven’t tried one yet (how’s THAT for self-control!) so I don’t know if I should recommend them yet.

This recipe calls for almond extract in the dough and almond extract in the glaze. I absolutely love the scent of almond extract. I’m pretty sure there was almond extract in a cookie from my youth, so nostalgia enters into this. My mother used to make little cookies that were a plain cookie dough wrapped around a maraschino cherry. They were rolled in granular sugar. I can still conjure up the smell of those cookies. Does anybody else remember those cookies?

The ones I made today are double glazed, meaning I dipped them in the glaze while they were still warm and then let them sit for a while on a cooling rack. Then I re-dipped them in glaze and put little decorations on them while the frosting was still wet. I thought the blue colours suited them well. 

I read that you should let the cookies sit for at least three hours for the glaze to harden. They’re still not completely hard yet, so I’ll leave them a while longer before I store them away. Fridge? Freezer? Just in an air tight container? Don’t know what would be best until Christmas. 

Do you make anything like this? Jeanie, I think you do.

A Woodland Theme and Big Winds

Yesterday was very, very busy. I am hosting Christmas for my side of the family this year. There are nieces and a nephew, all of whom are grown and living in various places, working various jobs. Since it has been a long time since we have all been together, I was really trying to make it work with as many people as possible. There was much back and forth with emails and texts and finally we finalized a date which works for 90% . 

I am now inspired to make sure my home looks nice and "Christmasy". Husband helped to haul out boxes and get me a chair so I didn't have to bend over too much (yes, I'm still dealing with this back, but I feel progress is being made, I am hopeful, although it is slow progress). I wanted to do the actual picking and choosing and decorating myself, so it's not that he didn't help, but you know how it is... you want it done the way you want it.

Something new I did this year was to create a display on a two-tiered metal, I don't know what to call it, display rack?? Husband bought it for me for the kitchen for fruit a few years ago, but it was too tall and the fruit always bruised too easily in it. I had an autumn display in it earlier this year and I envisioned a "woodland" theme for Christmas. Odd as it may sound, I wanted it on the bathroom counter, because that way pretty much everyone would see it and our bathroom is bead board and wood floor and wood cabinetry so it would work well. 

I've always loved these kinds of things - nature, little forest animals, natural texture (yes, I know the boughs are fake), anthropomorphism with hat-wearing birds. I've already professed my love for Jan Brett whose books feature so much glorious texture in her illustrations.

Oh how I adore this snowman. He is emerging from a wooden stump, but it is hard to see in this picture. 

I love how this little bird looks like it is carved from wood (I don't think it is). Unfortunately, I cut the head off the traditional woodland Santa in the background.

This bird has just a slight dusting of glitter on it. The Christmas ball ornaments I included have rabbits and lovely snowy outdoor scenes on them. If I had a Christmas rabbit  or squirrel I'd have included it in this display as well. For what it's worth, this year's theme in the stores seems to be gnomes. There are gnomes in every store - fabric, resin, big, little... So, good for gnome collectors. (Debra, she who seeks, are you on this?)

If you are an Ontario blogger friend, then you will know that we had some pretty awesome winds yesterday. It wasn't until I came downstairs this morning and puttered around that I looked out one particular window and my mind went, "wait, that doesn't look right." 

Indeed, we did not escape unscathed. In keeping with a woodland theme, here is what happened in our backyard. 

This great big Manitoba maple (actually box elder, but we've always called them Manitoba maples, don't know why) came down with the winds. It just popped out of the ground, rather than breaking off at the trunk. We were very very lucky because it did not damage the pool fence. If it had, what a nightmare that would have been. I don't even know if we could find the same type of fencing to fix it. The tree damaged some of the chicken run, but they don't go out much at this time of year now anyway. We also were lucky in that none of the similar trees fell on the chicken coop itself, or on our shed (which is more the size of a garage). Manitoba maples grow all along the west side of our property. We didn't plant them and they grow like weeds. If you cut them down, they sprout even more vigorously from their stumps. They don't have a lot of redeeming qualities as far as trees go.

Oh well, we have more firewood now. Husband has a chainsaw, but not big enough for this job, so he may have to rent or borrow. 

Moving on to more Christmas topics, I also began my baking yesterday. I always make this particular kind of cookie. I'm sure I've written about it before, but I'll throw in the recipe just in case you're interested. I don't refrigerate the dough by the way, just dive right in and bake them as soon as I've mixed the ingredients up. You can tell how much I've made these by the state of the little recipe "card".

I love how they "crinkle" on the top. They smell incredible, too.

You can tell I was going through a calorie counting phase at one point when I figured out how many calories were in each cookie. No, that's not 103 calories if you eat 33 cookies (I wish!!), but if the recipe makes 33 cookies, that's how many calories per cookie. But who cares. Just eat the cookie. 

I realized I am out of ground cloves and you just can't do gingerbread cookies without ground cloves, so I'll have to brave the crazy stores out there. Have you started your baking? Do you even bother? Have you made cookies similar to these? Do you also write on your recipe cards or in your recipe books? Do you still have recipe cards or are you all computerized, embracing the modern world? Do you also love little woodland animals wearing clothes?