There will be my mom's famous cut-out cookies, which are now my famous cut-out cookies - the recipe having been stolen by a homemaker friend with a passion for decorating cookies. The true secret to the cookies is to roll them out using confectioners sugar instead of flour (diabetics beware!).
There will be molasses cookies from a family gingersnap recipe. What makes them molasses cookies instead of gingersnaps, is an airtight container and a slice or two of fresh bread. The cookies absorb the moisture from the bread leaving a super soft and spicy treat. There will be Mexican wedding cookies. But we never called them that growing up - we called them Grandmother Stanton's horseshoe cookies for their shape and the fact that I had never had this cookie anywhere else before.
And there will be oven mitts. Lots of oven mitts. I've been a baker since I was a little girl - my mom and I used to bake around Christmas time and by the time I was a teenager, the job was all mine. And even though I am no stranger to cooking or baking and I know my way around a kitchen pretty well, I burn myself at least once or twice a year while taking something out of the oven. It's so bad, my boyfriend has quipped that he's going to get me welding gloves for Christmas.
So today I'm going off script and taking a break from the Christmas Carols for the Psychologically Challenged to bring you this occasion-appropriate activity code:
- Y93.G3, Activity, cooking and baking
