Christmas Treats - Memories in the Making

Can you believe it? Christmas is only a week away! Actually, our Christmas is going to stretch that entire week. Our two boys will be here Christmas Eve and Day, daughters #1 and 3 will arrive the 27th with their families, and daughter #2 and her crew will join the madness on the 29th. Yes, now is the time for me to get my holiday baking on.

Perhaps I'll start with a little Spritz. (recipe here) Definitely a classic and oh, so easy to make. And if you want to change up the flavors, you can go with either almond or vanilla extract. Hmm...I wonder how they would taste with an orange or lemon flavor added? I just might have to do a little experimentation. 

Thumbprint Cookies (recipe here) are another classic. I just love the pecan coating.

And, of course, sugar cookies (recipe here).  

I can't tell you all the memories I have of decorating sugar cookies, both with my kids and when I was young. The most vivid one is of going to my great-aunt Gladys's when I was a little girl. She never married or had any children of her own, but every year she used to invite her nieces and nephews to her place to decorate Christmas cookies. She had a very small kitchen, though, and one year I bumped into my cousin, sending his plate of unadorned cookies careening toward the floor where they promptly broke.

Aunt Gladys, a retired school teacher, looked at me very matter-of-fact and said, "Mindy, you'll just have to share your cookies."

I can still feel my bottom lip quivering. I didn't want to share my cookies. I'd waited all year for those cookies. Sniff, sniff.

Of course, there was no arguing with Aunt Gladys, so Jeff went home with half of my cookies.

To this day, I can't tell you what those cookies tasted like. But I have such fond memories of decorating them. And isn't that what the holidays are all about. Sharing memories and making new ones.

In addition to cookies, we have the candies. Not really baking, but essential nonetheless.

Everything from Buckeyes, aka peanut butter balls (recipe here)...

 To Pretzel Turtles (recipe here)...

 As well as the ever-popular fudge (recipe here).

Just last week I told you the fond memories fudge holds for me, that it was the one thing my mom made every Christmas. 

Yes, making/eating these holiday treats/staples is like having cherished old friends visit. You love spending time with them, but by the time the holidays are over, you're glad to see them go. Mostly because you've overindulged and January marks a fresh start.

What treats will you be baking/making this week? Do you have memories that are wrapped around cherished holiday recipes? I'd love to hear them.

As I close out this post, I want to wish all a blessed holiday season. For some, this will be a challenging time as they face their first Christmas without a precious loved one. Even in our sorrow, may we keep our focus on the true meaning of Christmas. A baby born in a stable Who was and still is the hope of the world. 

Merry Christmas!

Three-time Carol Award finalist, Mindy Obenhaus lives on a ranch in Texas with her husband, the youngest of her five children and two dogs. She's passionate about touching readers with Biblical truths in an entertaining, and sometimes adventurous, manner. When she’s not writing, she enjoys cooking and spending time with her grandchildren. Learn more at www.MindyObenhaus.com 

Mrs. Diana's Sugar Cookies - A Family Favorite

Well, here we are. Only three days until Christmas.

The stockings have been hung.

The gifts have been wrapped.

And while I had planned to show you pictures of the fabulous time my granddaughters and I had decorating cookies, I was having so much fun that I forgot to take any pictures.

However, I can show you some of the fruits of our sugar-induced labor.

Okay, so I was given this recipe for sugar cookies some 33 years ago when I was a young bride. And I've made them every year since. This year, though, I found another recipe that was very similar, except that it had a lot more sour cream which would equate to a fluffier cookie.

So I tried said recipe. It said to refrigerate for at least an hour. I waited two before attempting to roll out the dough.

Ugh! Talk about a kitchen fail. It stuck to everything, even the floured surface. 

Frustrated, I wrapped it back up and stuck it back in the fridge--overnight! 

In the meantime, I whipped up a batch of my tried and true recipe. The dough was much stiffer, though definitely not suitable for rolling yet. And would you believe the dough even tasted better?

The next morning, I pulled out my usual recipe, rolled it and cut out my cookies without issue. Then I pulled out the new recipe. After all, it had been in the fridge all night. 

It still stuck to everything! No matter how much flour I added. (insert frustrated scream)

I managed to eek out a few decent cookies before tossing the rest of the dough in the trash. 

Were they fluffier? 

Yes. But they didn't taste near as good as my tried and true recipe. And I am here to tell you that I will never switch again.

Mrs. Diana's Sugar Cookies

1 ½ C Sugar

1 C Butter

2 Eggs

2 T Sour Cream

1 t Baking Soda

3 ½ C Flour

½ t Nutmeg

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat well. Add remaining ingredients. Chill in refrigerator 2 hours to overnight. Roll to ¼ inch thickness on lightly floured surface and cut into shapes. Bake @ 350, 8-10 minutes.

There you have it. Short and simple. 

Some things just shouldn't be messed with.

Each of the girls got to take home their own plate of cookies. And they weren't limited to simply red and green. We had pink cookies, purple cookies, yellow and blue. 

Best of all, they went home with memories. 

When I was a little girl, my great-aunt Gladys used to invite us kids to her place to decorate Christmas cookies. She had a very small kitchen and one year I bumped into my cousin, sending his plate of unadorned cookies careening toward the floor where they promptly broke.

Aunt Gladys, a retired school teacher, looked at me very matter-of-fact and said, "Mindy, you'll just have to share your cookies."

I can still feel my bottom lip quivering. I didn't want to share my cookies. I'd waited all year for those cookies. Sniff, sniff.

Of course, there was no arguing with Aunt Gladys, so Jeff went home with half of my cookies.

To this day, I can't tell you what those cookies tasted like. But I have memories of decorating those cookies. 

And isn't that what the holidays are all about. Sharing memories and making new ones. 

By the way, one of the girls' plates did fall to the floor. Luckily, we were able to save most of them. And those that were lost got replaced from Grammy's stash. 

In closing, I'd like like to take this opportunity to wish all of you a very merry Christmas. May your stockings be stuffed and your cookies unbroken. :)

Merry Christmas, y'all!

Christmas Table Topper and Easy Sugar Cookies with Stained Glass Windows

Hello everybody! Merry Christmas EVE! Of course, by the time you read this, it will be Christmas, but for me, right now it's.... time to prepare for the Christmas day feast!

First, the table topper. We put all the leaves in the table and it seats ten. (Still not enough, but we'll stick the kids somewhere nearby.)

 Ha! Love my little guy's expression here. "Mom, stop taking my picture!"

 Greenery from outside, dollar store candles, some silk flowers chopped up, and paper punch snowflakes are just about perfect.

Love those red berries!

I put in a silver snowflake ribbon and had another ready, but it just didn't look right to me.

 Maybe it looked like a fire hazard!! What ever it was, I decided we should use that somewhere else. I set the candles on upside down ramekins so they might be a little farther from the greenery.

 Here it is, all finished. Total cost? $10 of Dollar Store materials! I love Pinterest. It made it really so easy to find a look I wanted for the table.

 Speaking of tables, my friend Mindy brought me a gift. It's a replacement of a  bowl I broke earlier this year. Another friend, Barbara, had given me a 'Fruits of the Spirit' fruit bowl. It was really special to me, and when it broke I was so sad! You can imagine my surprise when I opened this! My little guys said, "Hey, she fixed your bowl!" Ha!  I'm definitely thrilled to have this sweet reminder of the Holy Spirit on our table again.

So, before the table topper, we decorated a premade gingerbread house. MMMMM.....

Found these really sweet gingerbread men at the grocery store and decided we had to have them. Usually, there are not enough 'figures' for a family our size. We just make do. But hey, there were enough for each one of us AND a few friends!

 My brother likes to post pictures of his recent climbing expeditions and the kids put one of the gingerbread men on the roof and called it 'Uncle Conrad'.

 A Lego man crept in here somewhere. I think it's 'Pirates of the Caribbean' plus the Lone Ranger's hat. Poor little gingerbread man to the left is holding on to his gum drop for dear life.

Thrift store candle holders for .50 and that awesome paper punch plus some mod podge = some pretty votives for my kitchen! I'm all about the teal right now.These keep me company when I set up to work at the counter in the middle of the night. 

Some of these deadlines have come hot and heavy right on top of each other. What's a girl to do when she just can't sit at that desk another minute? Why, pull a Mrs. Gaskell (author of North and South) and write in the kitchen with wee children underfoot. I usually don't write during the daylight hours since our kitchen is a bit of a superhighway, but I've learned to edit with one eye on the crazies.

We put out our luminaria on Christmas Eve. We didn't get a chance to put up lights this year so it was nice to have an outward sign that we're celebrating!!

So,  my friend Barbara (she of the fruit bowl fame) asked us if we'd come sing carols at the nursing home on Christmas Eve. Of course we said yes, because we're always up for a good party! We also wanted to bring cookies, so it was a good time to try out a giant batch in the new mixer.

What you see there is 15 cups of flour, 12 eggs, 4 1/2 cups of butter, 6 cups of sugar, 3 tsp vanilla, 3 tsp salt, 3 tsp baking powder. 

Edna was watching with bated breath. She had never seen so many ingredients put in one bowl. 

Boris handled it like a champ.... except for one small incident. Apparently, he is ticklish. I had just put in the 12 eggs, the 4 1/2 cups melted butter and the 6 cups of sugar. I started him up, and thought it was a bit too high so I felt around his ribs for the little lever... He started to twitch and giggle, and I somehow pushed it all the way to the right.

Eggs, butter, sugar.... EVERYWHERE. Boris has power, no doubt about it. It took us 20 minutes to clean it all up. My daughter and I were laughing at how far we found globs of goo. A whole egg yolk was on the opposite side of the kitchen! Ok, once we changed, we started on the cookies...

 Stained glass window cookies are made by cutting out a regular cookie, then making another cut out inside of the first. Break hard candy like Life Savers or Jolly Ranchers and fill the hole. Bake as normal at 350F for 8-10 minutes, on a cookie sheet with tin foil.

When you take them from the oven, let cool on the counter for a few minutes. Then put them either in the freezer or leave them on the counter for ten minutes. Since we only have two cookies sheets, I put them in the freezer for 3 minutes or so to save time. 

I want to wish you all the merriest of Christmases! I read this quote the other day and thought it was just lovely. May the peace of the Christ child be with you all! 

“And when we give each other Christmas gifts in His name, let us remember that He has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans--and all that lives and move upon them. He has given us all green things and everything that blossoms and bears fruit and all that we quarrel about and all that we have misused--and to save us from our foolishness, from all our sins, He came down to earth and gave us Himself.”  ― Sigrid Undset

Bake-a-Memory Day at Ruthy's!

This was Emma and Beth at last year's "Bake A Memory" day.....

Isn't she adorable? She's precocious, wicked smart and incredibly competitive and she already makes up long, involved stories that live in her head.

:)

A couple of years ago we decided we should work more on making memories at Christmas instead of worrying about presents.

Memories last forever.... Presents often break or get out-grown.  

Bake-a-Memory day is a simple, fun gathering of grandchildren, their parents (any who want to stay and eat and help) and Grammy....

Me.  :)

We bake. We make crafts (time allowing) We decorate cookies. 

We eat.

This year we made cut-out cookies. 

This is Emma this year.... What a difference a year makes!

THIS RECIPE IS FROM MY MOTHER'S BETTY CROCKER COOKBOOK, 1950 EDITION. IT'S THE ONLY SUGAR COOKIE I MAKE. I OMIT THE CREAM OF TARTAR AND THE GRANULATED SUGAR. WE FROST THEM WITH THE BUTTERCREAM FROSTING RECIPE THAT'S ALL-TIME FAMOUS AND SIMPLE!

DELUXE SUGAR COOKIES (MARY'S SUGAR COOKIES)

1 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. almond extract (I use equal amounts of vanilla and almond, so 1 tsp. each)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour*
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tartar (I don't use this.)
Granulated sugar (I don't use this)

Mix thoroughly butter, confectioners' sugar, egg, vanilla, and almond extract. Blend in flour, soda, and cream of tartar. Cover; chill 2 to 3 hours.

WHEN READY TO BAKE:
Heat over 375 degrees F.

Divide dough in half. Roll each half 3/16-inch thick on lightly floured cloth covered board. Cut into desired shapes; sprinkle with granulated sugar. Place on lightly greased baking sheet.

The original directions called for baking until light brown on the edge, but I cut that a little shorter. I want these cookies tender and moist, like the Lofthouse ones you find at the stores. A slightly slower oven (350) and keeping the time to 7-8 minutes works well, but test your own oven to see what combination of factors gives you a chewy, moist but firm outside cookie.

Xavier is helping rinse the dishes. How stinkin' cute is he????

Now he wants "in" on the real action... He's eyeing Emma across the table. And here is Emma, a year later.... Look how grown up she is and how beautifully she handles the dough and her job of cutting out the cookie shapes! Emma, you rock!

A moment of levity...  That's Dave, 'Lijah, me and Emma. Dave and Lijah were cutting out gingerbread boys and bears... Oops. We had BODY PARTS everywhere. They missed the memo of not overlapping. It was a Christmas Cookie War Zone!!!  But we squished them back together, re-rolled the dough and cut out real people.... Not like REAL, but in one piece. You get it!

FROSTING RECIPE:

1 stick butter, softened
4 cups powdered sugar (also called confectioner's sugar or 10X sugar)
3 tsp. almond extract (or three squirts from my big bottle!)
1/4 cup milk (or so... you don't want this frosting thin like you usually see... you want it to be more like old-fashioned buttercream frosting)

Mix at low speed (or by hand) then whip for about two minutes. Add a little milk if necessary or thicken with a little extra sugar if needed.

Spread on cooled cookies and sprinkle holiday jimmies and sprinkles over fresh frosting. Frosting will "sugar crust" quickly and then the sprinkles won't stick...

They'll roll all over the floor and the dogs and babies will love you.

Mandy, daughter-of-my-heart with Xavier, saving his life and saving cookies for the good of mankind.

And we made Chocolate/Peanut Butter Chip cookies.... (RECIPE HERE)  We used the basic Ruthy's Famous Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe and (NEWS FLASH!!!) added a bag of Reeses' peanut butter chips.

:)

I love easy!!!

Just so youse don't think the Fresh Pioneer chick is the only one who can dress up a table... when it's not being used for art projects or homework, LOL!

Bake A Memory Day, 2012.... Lovely!