It's gotten cold around here. Really cold - like, single-digit freezin' season. Here's what the temperature was during one of my "Mom's Taxi" runs at night this past week:
Yes, Winter has arrived on Wildwood Circle. And at our house, that means the wood stove is cranking nearly 24/7. Despite the five cords of wood we usually go through in the course of a winter, our house (especially the kitchen) can stay pretty chilly when it's bitter outside.
I love our house. It looks kinda like a barn outside, with cedar siding and a gambrel roof. We were shocked to find out, when we moved in 20 years ago, that the house had been built with steel beams instead of the usual wooden framing. As a result, it can most likely bear the brunt of a wicked storm or earthquake. But the downside is that the walls are about a half-foot thick, and should be filled with insulation. See, the house had been vacant for the better part of a year before we moved in. During that time, residents of the surrounding woods decided to use the walls as their homes and their highways, trampling down the insulation and leaving big voids of uninsulated wall space. The mice, squirrels, bats, and other critters (even snakes!) have been evacuated, but trying to reinsulate the entire house is a daunting job that's been a victim of our procrastination for lo, these 20 years.
The chilliness seems worse in the kitchen (I've mentioned how our olive oil solidifies in one of our cabinets, right?). Our solution is to turn on the oven and make something. Problem solved: the kitchen warms up and we get a yummy treat.
Since it's Christmastime, of course we're making cookies. My favorite ones to make are Christmas cutouts.
I usually use a sugar cookie recipe from my mom's Betty Crocker cookie book - which, as you can see, is well-used and dog-eared. There's even a sheet of paper with my mom's favorite cookies listed along with the page numbers of where to find the recipes. My mom wrote the list, and I love it.
We do big cookies around here. Big. So the sugar cookie recipe we use needs to be sturdy enough to hold up. I use "Ethel's Sugar Cookies" and it hasn't failed me yet.
But they do tend to be a bit hard. Maybe it's just the sheer size of the cookies. Don't believe me? Here:
They're huge. One benefit to such a big cookie is that I can trick myself into thinking I'm being healthier by eating only "one cookie."
Our cookie cutters are obviously big, and as a bonus, they are topped with a silicone rim that makes them easier to grip and adds a cushion when you stamp them down onto the dough. My all-time favorite cutter, however, is this wee little cutter in the shape of a hand.
It's actually the shape of my Tommy's hand when he was three months old (he's now 16!) I bought it with a gift certificate from my sister-in-law from a beautiful catalog called Chinaberry. It was the kind of catalog I could spend hours poring over, chock full of beautiful playthings like woolen dolls, China play silks, and wooden toys. We chose the cookie cutter and I sent in a photocopy of baby Tommy's little hand, along with an inscription that Chinaberry engraved:
Don't tell Tommy I've revealed his baby nickname. He'll kill me.
The middle image above is Tommy's grown-up hand holding a cookie replica of his baby hand!
Unfortunately, Chinaberry no longer exists, but luckily NovaNatural Toys & Crafts offer the same beautiful things that make childhood magical.
Back to the cookies: I solved the dilemma of possible hard textures this year by adopting a shortbread recipe from Ina Garten. Don't you love shortbread? It's an easy recipe, it involves few ingredients, and the dough is lusciously soft and easy to roll out. It holds up under our big cookie cutters (as long as we roll the dough thick enough), but we do have to be careful with star shapes and other shapes with edges that could break off.
I like using a biscuit cutter on shortbread when I make this style of cookie.
It actually won an office cookie contest a couple of years ago, judged by a popular local cookie chef. The recipe involves dipping the baked and cooled cookies in a glaze of powdered sugar, milk, and mint extract. The first year I baked them, I followed the recipe exactly and kinda thought it tasted like toothpaste. On the advice of a coworker, I traded the mint extract for lemon, and Voila! A cookie-contest winner was born. I love this cookie because it can look fancy and taste so delicate.
Oh, that photo at the top of the post? Tommy left me that little flour heart after rolling out a batch of cookies. He's still such a love. But again, don't tell him I told you that.
So what cookies are you baking this season? Despite the pandemic, I may (safely) pack up a few boxes of cookies and leave them on friends' doorsteps this Christmas. Whatever you decide to do, and whatever holiday you celebrate, may it be a healthy and happy one.
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