Noël cookies: thank your moms

OK, so I just want to start by saying that Christmas cookies are hard work. I’ve made quite a few cookies in my time, and all of them have been easy to make until now. I didn’t anticipate the amount of effort it would take to deliver authentic holiday cheer (in the form of so much butter, flour and sugar) to my fellow Christmas-party-goers. In retrospect, it seems that I was ignorant of my own dear mother’s Christmas cookie-baking prowess. As a wee lad, I remember the freezer, refrigerator, and kitchen counter always seemingly chock-full of the many delicious choices we came to expect during that time of the year. And not once did she receive even the slightest bit of baking assistance from her husband or her three sons. She just plodded away for hours without so much as a groan or grumble of displeasure. What I’m trying to say is that now’s as good a time as any to thank your mom for all those cookies! Because that was some seriously underappreciated work!

My original plan for the week leading up to the Christmas party was to make four or five varieties of cookie for the guests. By my own estimates, this should have been a breeze. My mom used to bang out about 12 lbs. of cookies per hour during the holdiays, if I remember correctly. Anyways, due to a lack of skills and proficiency on my part, I was only able to muster two varieties, although I would contend that they were two very challenging varieties.

I started with the pinwheels. Before making this particular type of cookie, I realized that I had never made a cookie that required being rolled out by a rolling pin! No problem. To my surprise, however, the dough was much stickier than I had anticipated. Now, to make the pinwheel happen, you split the dough and work some melted chocolate into one of the halves. Then you have to roll the white and brown dough separately into “equal sized 1/8-inch rectangles” (no I am not kidding). Once again, my naïveté got the better of me. I did not have any wax paper (I never needed it before), so I simply rolled my two doughs out on aluminum foil! Well, needless to say, aluminum doesn’t have the same properties as wax paper. I was able to make two similarly rectangular-ish shapes with some success. I then carefully proceeded to sandwich the two rectangles on top of one another, at which point I was able to very gingerly peel the aluminum foil away from the top layer. Rolled it up neatly and put it in the fridge. The next day, all I had to do was slice the log into equal-sized disks and bake them up! That was the easy part. Amazingly, they came out perfect.

The second project was gingerbread men. I won’t get into the effort too much, except to tell you never to buy icing at the store. Same with lemon glaze. It’s well worth the effort for the peace of mind that goes with eating stuff that isn’t loaded with corn syrup and weird chemicals and preservatives, so long as it’s this easy to make it yourself. Also, buy a nice gingerbread man cookie cutter, not some cheapie Wal-Mart piece of crap. If you’re gonna make the effort, then this is an easy way to improve your product.

Pro-tip: Don’t get a canvas snoot. Plastic bags work well and are cheaper!

Here’s another pro-tip! I put my gingerbread man dough in the refrigerator overnight (which is totally allowed). The next day I thawed it out, and much to my chagrin, it had become all dried out and crumbly! At first, I panicked. I called some friends to see what I could do. Luckily, the instincts of my dear friend Kathleen won the day. She said “It’s dry? Did you try adding water to it?” Well damn it if that didn’t fix the dough right up! Thanks, Kath.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone! Don’t forget to thank your moms!

-Sav