Cookies, fudge, peanut clusters, Carmel corn, chocolate covered pretzels, more cookies, divinity, puppy chow. That's my list of Christmas Treats. It is not set in stone like a lot of my other very reasonable Christmas lists. I am willing to try new treats and have discarded a few of them over the years.
I am not a sugar cookie maker. For so many years I never had a proper place to roll and cut cookies. My mom had this big wooden board just for this purpose (and pie crust). I did not have such a board or a decent counter top. This tradition just never took hold with us. I am sorry because i love to decorate sugar cookies even when one considers the cookie decorating environment that I grew up in. Sugar cookie time at my house got a little heated. Mom was in charge of the rolling and most of the cutting. She had a system that required her to put one foot up on a pulled out chair. She was very frugal with the cookie dough, squeezing a cookie out of every last bit. There were trees and wreathes, some bells and ornaments. I think she even got a little freestyling going on and made a snowman or two out of regular round shapes that she joined. The rolling, cutting and baking were done one evening with the decorating to follow the next.
I don't remember Mom making frosting as much as she made icing. Icing was thinner and sweeter than frosting. She would ice the cookie then pass it off to one of us kids to decorate. Mom had a Red Wing shoe box full of cinnamon dots, silver balls, red, green, blue, yellow sugars, multicolored little balls that looked like they came out of the old Tylenol capsules, and chocolate sprinkles. Sheila and I were pretty free flowing with the decorations. Dick, on the other hand, was a bit of a perfectionist and had a penchant for calling our cookies gaudy. That usually led to some tears, some pouting and the end of cookie decorating joy. Sheila continues to make Christmas cookies and makes one special one for her brother each year. The cookie mentioned usually has all the spilled off decorations from all the other cookies on it. He eats it with joy!
Fudge. Oh, fudge. The mother of all Christmas candy! I had never made it on my own until Danny and I lived in Vista. I either survived Christmas on what Mom had sent me, or found some poor substitute to get me by. But we were celebrating our very first Christmas together in our own home. The two previous Christmas's were spent either apart or at my parents house. So I was going to make fudge using my mom's recipe. I knew she made fudge every year, but I had no idea what was required. It was the first and last time. I followed the directions, I dropped the fudge in the water until it formed a ball, I stirred until it lost its shine. Well, I stirred until my arm was on fire then I called in Danny who stirred until the wooden spoon broke in the pan and he announced that the fudge was done. The following Christmas, we were back in Cedar Rapids and I was able to enjoy Mom's fudge again. The following four years, we were in Germany where Christmas treats are on a whole different level of incredible. We were then in Cedar Rapids again for a couple of years so it wasn't until 2000 that I was faced with a Christmas without fudge. I finally broke down and followed the recipe on the marshmallow fluff jar and found it to be a very good knock off of my mom's. No wooden spoons were injured in the making of this fudge!
Peanut clusters and chocolate covered pretzels are usually made at the same time. I don't make a lot of them, just enough for Danny and the kids to get their fix! My fondest memories of making anything dipped in chocolate are with my sister, Sheila. Sheila has a real talent for chocolate dipping and will make mounds of it. I probably won't be doing much dipping this year, but everyone did dip into Sheila's Christmas tin of peanut clusters this year! Carmel corn is also Sheila's specialty. I have never attempted it, never will. That is all Sheila.
Puppy Chow was a treat brought to our family from my mom's coworkers. Chocolate and peanut butter covered cereal doused with powdered sugar. Looks a lot like dog food but tastes like joy! We have no problem polishing off a big bowl of it each Christmas.
And last and least is divinity. Ashlyn and I made it once for my sister, Crissy. We slaved all day over a hot stove, we dirtied every dish in the kitchen, we wiped the sweat off our brows. We made divinity! We thought we would try just a bit so we could see what all the fuss was about, it was about marshmallow fluff. After all the hard work, Ashlyn, the bright girl that she is, read the ingredient list on Marshmallow fluff. It was exactly the same as the ingredient list that we just measured and stirred and dropped on wax paper. Crissy loved it though!
The baking and dipping and decorating brings back the memories from all the Christmas seasons gone by. Mom making fudge to send to Bobby or Dickie when they were in the Corps. They got all the perfectly cut pieces and we got all the edge pieces. That was ok with me, I will take fudge in any shape! I remember my dad painting the icing on the cookies shaped like the bells. He would paint the ribbons on with colored icing. Those cookies went to Sr. Lenore after midnight Mass.
There is so much about Christmas that connects me to my youth. But I think gaudy cookies and fudge are probably the sweetest memories that I have. Now that I have a big counter in which to roll and cut out cookies, I think there is a tradition that I will start with my grandchildren.
No comments:
Post a Comment