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Karen has been making and decorating Christmas cookies all month, and over the very rainy weekend I had fun helping her. She’s been making three kinds: Spritz cookies, Sugar cookies, and Gingerbread cookies.

Technorati Tags: Christmas, Cookies, National Lampoon, Christmas Vacation

She started a few weeks ago with the Spritz cookies. Earlier in the season we hosted an over-the-top Pampered Chef party for my cousine, Dani. We were left with much bounty, including a Cookie Press, which I learned is a necessary implement for Spritz cookies. Karen has been using it with some success although there is apparently a technique to getting the cookies to come out just right.

After many sheets of Spritz cookies, Karen bought some pre-made cookie dough for Sugar and Gingerbread cookies. We discussed this at great length — although it is a mark of distinction to make your own dough, it’s actually a lot of work and she just wanted to get busy decorating the cookies. After our many moves of recent years her favorite cut-out cookie shapes were misplaced and she was left with only two that were easily found: a star and a heart. The first batch of Sugar cookies was almost all stars, which were fun to decorate because they are a complex shape with lots of places to put the frosting. But the Gingerbread cookies caused a crisis: they are supposed to be in the shape of little people. This sent me on an excavation to the boxes in the garage, where I happily found the lost cache of cookie cutter shapes in (naturally) a special Christmas tin. However, I learned only after that our own Gingerbread cookie cutter has been lost since Alaska days, which sent us both on a short van trip to borrow my mother’s very simple little copper versions.

With such a wonderful palette of shapes, we spent many happy hours cutting and baking, and then more happy hours applying the frosting while watching one of our favorite Christmas movies, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Nothing cracks me up like the scene where the Griswald Family Christmas Tree makes its first appearance, since it reminds me of the many Christmases my family spent cutting our own tree, which meant trodging through the virgin snow until The Right Tree was located.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 19th, 2005 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.