This year I was sure I forgot.
I convinced myself I could not remember how to make cookies at Christmas.
2020 had been a swirl of sadness, illness and death and the constant onslaught of major and minor responsibilities had left me struggling with focus. Were cookies really a priority?
And yet, rituals were certainly a necessity. Nothing seemed more important than participating in activities that were traditional and that reminded me of what had come before. I decided to dive in and start the process, taking my Good Housekeeping: 125th Anniversary off the shelf and locating Classic Sugar Cookies on page 702. After all, I’d made them many times before; how could I go wrong?
Something about gathering all the ingredients and tools centered me and gave me momentary focus. There was a task to be done and instruction to be followed. Before I knew it, I had the requisite sugar cookie dough, seemingly perfect in consistency, ready to roll into disks and chill in the ‘fridge.
With cookies that need to be cut, I find that the biggest challenge is getting the temperature of the dough just right. Too cold and you cannot cut a cookie; too warm and you have goo. My husband stepped in, as he always does, and showed me a great way to decorate with sugar -- by leaving the cookie cutter surrounding the dough on the baking sheet so that the sugar does not end up all over. That helped a lot. Also, spending just a little more time and money by going to the housewares store and purchasing sparkling sugar, versus colored cane sugar from the grocery store, made a huge difference. Sparkling sugar looks better, glistens, and does not melt on the cookie when baked for too long.
With my newly-restored confidence in cookie-making I decided to dive into the new-and-apparently0-improved Good Housekeeping: 1,200 Triple-Tested Recipes, which a friend had given me several years ago. Why not try something new this year? Instead of cutting gingerbread out, I decided to attempt Jumbo Ginger Snaps on page 606, something I had never baked before.
Remember I mentioned focus? Well, clearly it was missing at some step of the process, as I ended up with what looked like brown wet paste. Roll dough into a ball? I could tell by simply looking that this dough would not roll. What went wrong? Clearly, there was not enough flour. When I thought back, I remembered dipping the measuring cup into the flour canister once, but not twice, therefore having placed only one cup of flour into a two-cup recipe. In the end, adding that extra cup did the trick and the dough rolled easily into balls that, when covered with cane sugar, created a mighty tasty ginger snap.
I’m so glad I didn’t cave into that sense of defeat this year. Baking has given me focus and a task that is pleasant. After all, most of the cookies get given away and who doesn’t like a batch of freshly baked cookies in a most wretched year? Ultimately, making cookies have, at least in the moment, settled my monkey mind.
Perhaps it is because of cookies that I have a few moments of calm.