Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Ah ... Let the baking begin!

I'm about a week later than usual ... but I finally hauled out my favorite Christmas cookie recipes this afternoon and ... got started!
I've told you before how my Grandma Mary baked the most scrumptious and beautiful cookies every single Christmas. All of us looked forward to going to her house Christmas Eve to see the cousins who had come to town and were staying there with grandma. My grandmother decorated her house just like ... a fairy land almost ... sparkling and so ... beautiful! I wonder if she knew how much it meant to us that she went to all of that trouble.
This is my grandma's version of a Russian Tea Cake recipe. It is the best I have ever tasted and it was always .. ALWAYS ... my favorite every single year (a "half" recipe calls for TWO cups of BUTTER ... what's not to like?). Except my grandma rolled each cookie into little logs, perfectly shaped and uniform in size! I've tried rolling mine into logs, but I never seem to keep the size consistent ... some turn out fat, some skinny, some longer than others, etc. So I gave up! Now I just roll them into little balls and flatten them a bit. They taste just the same no matter what shape you make them. One Christmas, I got sick eating so many cookies at my grandma's house!
And these are the butter spritz cookies ~ my grandma's recipe, of course ~ except she had a cookie press that was NOT automated, and her little Christmas trees were delicately beautiful ~ every one! I always miss my Grandma Mary this time of the year. We were not especially close (I was just ONE of 22 grandchildren), but I admired and loved her very much.

Tomorrow, I hope to make fudge and some holiday M & M cookies. And then I can pick out some of each batch to arrange into a pretty holiday tin and enclose it in the gift box(es) I'm sending out to El Paso this Saturday. I'm flying there in just about two weeks to celebrate an early Christmas with Jesse, Di and the grandchildren.

So ... have you started your holiday baking yet?

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