Priceless

In an attempt to recreate a family holiday tradition, last night I tried to bake and decorate sugar cookies. Chris and I are visiting his family all weekend, so I thought it would be nice to have something like that to take with us. Earlier in the week I bought all of the ingredients, some new Christmas-shaped cookie cutters, and fun tins to store the cookies. The baking part went alright I guess, despite the fact that I didn’t realize if you use a light cookie sheet, a dark cookie sheet, and a pizza stone each for a separate batch, all of the bake times are quite different. I ended up with a nice array of light golden brown, dark golden brown, and brown. After chucking the browns, I sat down with my acceptable golden browns and got ready to decorate. I set it up just like my mom used to – all of my bare cookies, frosting and decorations spread out on the dining table, my tasty canvas and artist’s tools. After frosting about five cookies, I realized that the fun of our family tradition was sitting around the table with my mom and brother and listening to my dad in the background watching football. The banter that we had, and the flow of artistic creativity (“Ooo, look at what I did!”) made the decorating go by much faster. At 11:30 pm with only 8 down and the rest of the 6 dozen sugar cookies to go, I decided that the sugar cookie decorating tradition is best left to fond memories. I was covered in flour, and getting whiney, and I might’ve even cursed at the cookies at some point. Thanks Mom, for always making it fun and easy!

Mixing the cookie dough: 10 minutes.
Rolling the dough and cutting cookie shapes: 20 minutes.
Memories of making holiday cookies with my family: a lifetime.

Happy Holidays, everyone!