The One With Christmas Cookies

As we continue through the food memories journey, it seemed right to think about Christmas, since it comes close on the heels of Thanksgiving.

It's still a bit early to make Christmas cookies, although pfeffernusse  (look below the Lane cake recipe) can be made this early to let the flavors blend. Still, making Christmas cookies with my Mom and decorating them with my siblings and leaving some for Santa on Christmas Eve (with a glass of milk) are all strong food memories. It's also a cherished memory from raising my own children. We started when they were young and my daughter and I still decorate cookie together each Christmas as time allows. I like to make rolled Gingerbread cut-outs.

The classic Christmas cookie was a vanilla flavored rolled out sugar cookie that we cut with an assortment of cutters...there were stars with wavy edges, a sweet bell, a Santa in profile with a bundle of toys on his back, gingerbread boys and girls,  snowmen and an angel. A round cutter could be used to make Christmas balls, which allowed for a lot of creativity in the decorations. In the early years I think that we used Royal icing and colored sugars and jimmies, and later the icing was tinted, too. In time I remember using some already made colored icing from the grocery store. I loved the gold and silver tinted tiny dragees because they added sparkle and shine...but were hard on teeth if bitten into. Not sure if they even make them anymore.

To decorate a lot of sugar cookies with a Christmas theme in a short time, you can cut the shapes out of rolled dough and put them on the cookie sheets, then sprinkle red and green colored sugars at appropriate spots, press the sugar lightly into the cookies, then bake. When baked the colors will have spread out a bit, but there will still be that festive red and green look...no extra time needed for decorations, although to gild the lily you can still add more icing, sugar, jimmies, sprinkles, small candies, etc.

My favorite, and the cookie that continued to be baked by Mom well past her 80s, was the pecan crescent cookie. She would ship them all over the country for each of her children to share with their families. They had lots of butter and margarine and ground or finely chopped pecans and were shaped like a crescent moon. Baked cookies were rolled while still warm in some confectioners sugar or the sugar was sifted on top through a small tea strainer. Here are photos I took of Mom's hands as she made a batch one year.

Another family favorite was rum balls. You could start making this one pretty soon, too, since these little nuggets taste better when they have had time to ripen. Crushed vanilla wafers and finely chopped nuts and cocoa are the main ingredients, but there is real rum, too. By the time you eat them the alcohol has evaporated, so you get a nice rum flavor. These are another time-consuming hand-formed treat. Each little ball gets rolled in granulated sugar and them put in an airtight container for a few weeks so the flavors meld.

We also baked spritz cookies, the kind that you squish out with a cookie press. My favorite shape was the heart, followed by the dog. I also love the flower shape. You can either tint the dough or decorate with sprinkles or icing after they are baked.

My daughter's favorite is Santa's Whiskers, a refrigerator cookie that has pecans and candied cherries, both red and green. The whiskers are shredded coconut, but we have skipped that part for quite a while, so I call them Shaven Santas. The lovely thing about them is that you can keep the dough log in the fridge and only bake a few at a time...perfect when unexpected guests show up at tea time.

Rolled Sugar Cookies

1 cup butter or margarine
1 cup sugar
1 egg
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
    With butter or margarine at room temperature,  beat in sugar and egg. Sift dry ingredients together and add to first mixture. Mix well. Roll dough to 1/8 inch thickness, cut with cookie cutters. Place on lightly buttered cookie sheets. Bake in a 4000 F. oven for 7- 8 minutes. If dough sticks while rolling, chill briefly. Cookies can be sprinkled with colored sugar before baking or, after cookies have cooled, can be frosted & decorated as desired. Makes 5 - 8 dozen cookies.

Crescent Cookies

1½ cups butter, at room temperature
¾ cup granulated sugar
3 cups all-purpose flour
1½-2 cups pecans, finely chopped
1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Confectioners sugar
Cream the butter until light. Add the rest of the ingredients except confectioners sugar, and mix thoroughly. Chill the dough. Shape dough into 1” x 3” crescents on a buttered baking sheet. Bake for 20 -25 minutes in a 3000 F. oven. Cool cookies on a baking rack. Roll cookies in confectioners sugar. Store in an air-tight container. Makes 4 dozen. MOM’S NOTES:  Can sub ½ cup light butter or margarine.

Rum Balls

1 cup vanilla wafer crumbs
1½ cups pecans, finely chopped
1 cup confectioners sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
3 tablespoons rum (may use bourbon)
Combine the first four ingredients. Add syrup and rum. Mix thoroughly with clean hands. Shape into small balls and roll balls in confectioners sugar or super fine sugar. Store in air-tight container. Mellow for a week - then open and enjoy! Makes about 3 dozen balls.

Spritz Cookies
For making with a cookie press
recipe from the Christmas Cookie Deck by Chronicle Books1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
dash of salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a bowl, beat the butter until creamy. Gradually add sugar and beat until light and fluffy.
Mix in egg and vanilla and almond extracts. Add flour and salt mixing until smooth.
Pack dough into a cookies press fitted with a star or ridged tip or any desired design. Press out dough onto greased baking sheet.
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until edge are lightly browned. If a 1-inch wide ridged cutter is used, immediately cut strips crosswise on the diagonal to make 1 1/2 -inch-long cookies. Transfer to racks to cool. Makes about 6 dozen.

Shaven Santas

1 cup softened butter (2 sticks)
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
3/4 cup mixed red and green candied cherries
1/2 cup pecans

Cream butter and sugar in a mixing bowl. Add almond extract and beat until creamy.

Mix in the flour until well blended. Dough will be stiff.

Spread cherries and pecans around top of batter.

Stir in fruit and nuts. Mix well. Form dough into two logs on pieces of plastic wrap.
Wrap well and refrigerate up to one week or freeze up to one month.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Remove dough logs from fridge or freezer. If frozen let thaw a bit.

With a serrated knife, cut crosswise into 1/4 inch thick discs.

Bake on ungreased cookie sheets about 12 minutes or until edges are golden. Cool on rack.

Makes 4 or 5 dozen. Note: To make as Santa's Whiskers roll logs in coconut before wrapping to refrigerate or freeze. Proceed as written with rest of recipe. Make sure not to burn coconut when baking.

The One With Oysters for Eight

Continuing on our journey of food memories, we return to my childhood. Like this photo of the fried oysters? There's a recipe at the end!

A thoughtful reader suggested that it might be fun to know about dinner time in our household when I was a child. Well, we had a large table and a parquet wood floor. About once a meal someone spilled milk, which then threatened to sink into the many cracks in the wood floor, so one of us would immediately get out the towel to soak up the milk and another would head for the mop and bucket on the cellar stairs to mop up the spill in a way that would eliminate future spoiled milk smell.

When we were very young, my Dad sat at one end of the table and my Mom at the end closest to the kitchen. In general the older children would sit at the end near my Dad but it changed over time so I don't have a strong sense of any on particular place being 'mine'. We all had to be home by dinner time and it was always the same time (5 or 6 pm - I forget which but I suspect some sibling will remember). We were expected home for dinner unless there was a dire excuse or we were at scout camp or something similar. Since none of us played for a sports team, the only times we were gone were usually when we had to baby sit at dinner time and later for another family and that was when we were at least 12.

Here is a photo from when we were all adults. The door leads into the kitchen. We were served a small quantity of wine from when we were teens. My Dad felt that it was a good idea to learn to handle alcohol at home and not to get messed up with it when you left home. Seemed to work pretty well as far as I can tell.

Dinner time was a time to converse, and we were expected to not hog the conversation. My parents both enjoyed discussing current events so I began reading the morning Washington Post paper pretty early so that I could join in. My Mom was very interested in politics and eventually became the district Democratic party precinct chair. We also talked about what was going on in our lives. Unfortunately we were also allowed free hand at critiquing each other. Unkind comments built up over time which shaped me in many ways. Pretty sure the same happened to many of my siblings.

The food always went around the table in one direction (counter clockwise?). We were expected to eat whatever we put on our plate and to have some of everything. There were no special diets or anything like that, so no one had anything cooked just for them, although a few changes were made when we found out that my older sister had dietary allergies. In general we had a lot of food cooked from scratch, frozen things like frozen vegetables and plenty of canned things like canned beans and canned tuna and canned soups. There was often dessert, but many times it was fruit. I especially liked stewed prunes the way my Mom made them with vanilla.

As you might imagine, getting enough food for 8-10 people on the table all at once was a challenge. Fortunately we took turns setting the table and clearing the table, putting away leftovers, and washing the dishes. I think that learning to be part of the family by having chores fairly early was a set of life skills that has been extremely valuable, not only for the actual skills learned, but for learning to do a job well, on time, and while working well with others. I learned to take pride in my efforts, too.

Here is a photo taken in the dining room when we were all much older. As you can see, it's not a huge room. Still, a lot of fun things happened in the dining room over the years.

After the next to the last child in the family was born, when I was 10 years old, it was decided that the three oldest children (ages 10, 11, and 12), would make dinner once a week. My poor mother had and infant to care for and also had to teach each of us to cook and get everything on the table while it was still the temperature it was supposed to be. She was a trooper.

This followed a disaster of a Thanksgiving where Mom was in the hospital and the three of us tried to make the full meal and ended up with burnt peas and lumpy gravy and cold mashed potatoes, among other things. The state of the kitchen was the worst...I think we used every pot and pan and lid in the house. The best part of the meal was the jellied cranberry sauce because all it required was opening both ends of the can and sliding the jelly onto a small plate! We tried, we really did, but what a meal to start with!

Eventually all Mom's effort to teach us to cook and have everything on the table at the same time, with hot things hot and cold things cold and the kitchen tidied up as we went (more or less) paid off because it meant that Mom had fewer nights to cook. Another advantage is that we all learned to cook, even my brothers. My parents were unusual at that time in history because they didn't believe in mens work and womens work, as so many did, but had us all learn whatever work was needed.

Because I was slow at doing my homework, my night became Friday night. No homework at all that night. If there was any I usually did it Sunday night. No procrastination there.

Being an observing Catholic family, Friday night meant no meat. I learned how to make interesting things like fried fish and hush puppies, salmon loaf supreme, and shrimp etouffee. One night Dad came home with two quart canning jars packed with fresh shucked oysters. There was a great fishmonger in Georgetown so if he had a meeting in DC he sometimes stopped and picked up oysters or other fish.

The first time it was oysters I had a terrible time. The favored way to prepare oysters was to fry them. Getting them ready to fry meant dipping each one in seasoned flour, then into beaten egg, then into bread crumbs. Doing enough for two people (about a dozen oysters) is no big deal, but enough for 9 or 10 people is awful. After the first dozen my hands and the dipping forks were covered in this gunk made up of oyster juice, flour, egg and crumbs. By the time the last one was breaded I was thoroughly sick of oysters. Then the frying took forever! Since I never knew when the oysters would magically arrive, I had usually begun preparing something else for dinner, too. Good thing I loved eating oysters.

You would think that all of this would have soured me on fried oysters, but, no, I still love to eat them. I just let someone else cook them. Fortunately a local restaurant makes great fried oysters. Maybe I'll see if Sweetie wants to eat out and go there.

Here is my brother Phil's recipe for Fried Oysters. He makes them with his sons, fondly known as 'the Pirates'. First photo is of Mom and the Pirates, then Phil and one of them then the other. These photos were taken when they were young. They are grown now, but I love to remember them this way, too.

Phil and the Pirates Fried Oysters (updated version)

1 jar oysters for two - four people - buy as many jars as you will need to serve your group
1 cup flour
salt and pepper to taste
2 eggs
¼ cup water or milk
2 cups fine dry bread crumbs or Panko
Vegetable oil or shortening...enough to come up
1 inch on your frying pan when hot

Drain the oysters in a strainer or colander. Discard the drained liquid or reserve to flavor oyster stew.

Prepare the breading: In one bowl combine the flour, salt and pepper. In another bowl beat the eggs with the water.
(Note: the Pirates use milk in their egg wash and make it an eggy wash, not so much liquid.) In a pie pan or similar wide shallow bowl place the fine dry bread crumbs (plain) or Panko crumbs. Use more if more jars of oysters are used and increase the flour mix and egg dip, too.

Line a sheet pan with waxed paper or parchment paper.

Using a fork or spoon, transfer an oyster to the flour bowl and dredge with flour. Transfer to the egg mixture bowl and coat with the egg mixture, then transfer to the bread crumbs or Panko and coat with that. Lift the oyster up to dislodge excess bread crumbs or Panko and place the breaded oyster on the prepared sheet pan.

Repeat this process until all of the oyster have been breaded. Chill the oysters for at least 15 minutes, up to 30 minutes to set the breading.

Slowly heat the vegetable oil or shortening in a frying pan to about 1 inch depth (the Pirates might have it deeper, more like 2-3 inches), until oil is very hot, just shy of smoking. When the oil is hot, fry the oysters, about 6 - 8 at a time, turning to the other side when the first side is golden brown.

When golden on both sides, remove from the oil with slotted spoon or tongs to a tray lined with absorbent paper. Add the next batch of oysters, then transfer the ones on the absorbent paper to a cookie sheet in a warm oven to keep them warm. Put them in to fry at intervals so you don’t cool the oil.

When all are fried, mound on a platter and serve with lemon and catsup, cocktail sauce or chili sauce.

The One Where Dad Bakes Bread

November is a month for many things, including Thanksgiving, birthdays for two sisters, and a writing challenge where you post some writing every day during the month. It's called Nanowrimo and the idea is to encourage writers to write a novel. Since I'm a blogger but have no intention of writing a novel, I'm going to just write.  I'm going to attempt a daily post...no promises, but the theme will be Food Memories. Hope you'll journey down the remembrance road with me.

The photo is from October, but today is the next day, All Saints Day in the Christian world, so that's OK. The photo was taken one year when Mom and Dad visited us via train. Somehow we messed up the time and arrived at the station an hour late for their planned departure so they stayed an extra day...Halloween...and left on Nov. 1.

Although I don't bake nearly as much as I used to (which Sweetie appreciates as he continues to drop pounds through healthy eating and extra exercise), this started out, pretty much, as a baking blog. I love to bake. It's one of my favorite hobbies. When I was young it was the first cooking I did, except for making sandwiches and that kind of thing.

My Mom didn't share her kitchen well and she was upfront about that. A big part of that was that it was a small kitchen. Having eight kids to get underfoot didn't help, either. Being allowed to be in the kitchen baking cookies or a birthday cake was a treat. She was pretty patient with helping at first, but expected me to learn quickly (which, fortunately, I did) and to learn through reading package instructions and recipes in cookbooks along with her instructions.

Because I started that way, I usually can do a quick read-through of a recipe and know if it will be easy or difficult, about how long it will take, and I can often imagine how it will taste and come pretty close if not spot on. 60 or more years of experience really helps, but I remember when I was in my early 20s and I had to make a dessert for a dinner party with my in-laws (first husband). My friends were shocked when I made a cake that was a brand new recipe and that I changed a few things about the recipe even though I'd never made it. "Aren't you worried that it won't turn out?", they asked. I never did worry about that because my baked goods almost always were delicious and even those that didn't meet my expectations were still good enough for company. I sound smug...sorry...but it is a talent I was born with and nurtured, so I can be proud of it.

My Mom baked lots of delicious things, including her famous apple pie, warm and buttery biscuits, great cornbread in a skillet, delicious cakes and cookies and special desserts for Christmas like Lane Cake and crescent cookies. She made Parker House rolls on special occasions, but she left the major bread baking to my Dad.

Dad grew up in a number of places, mostly in the South, but often in farming communities or places with farms nearby. He loved fresh produce and had a garden until too much shade from the maple trees made it impossible. I suspect that helping to raise so many children and his job also got in the way. In my late teens I think that things became a little easier because he started baking bread every Sunday after church. I wish now that I had helped him, but I was too chatty. The bread baking time was his time for quiet and usually no one else was in the kitchen. Since we had a large family with plenty of sandwiches being made for lunches, he baked a lot of bread every week. I think it was eight loaves. Although it wasn't artisan bread, it was far better than the tasteless balloon bread that was pretty much all you could find in the grocery stores. I remember it as white loaves with a good top crust, golden sides, and a nice even crumb, plus a delicious taste, especially toasted.

After moving to the North Bay, I discovered Brother Juniper (Peter Reinhart) and his artisan breads, I sent my Dad a copy of his book Sacramental Magic in a Small Town Cafe, in which Peter tells about how he and his wife Susan ran a cafe and baked bread for it to help support a Christian service community's retreat center. It included recipes for some of his famous breads like Struan, Wild Rice and Onion, and a great plain loaf, too. I think my Dad tried out the technique of retarding the dough to increase the flavor and said that his bread was even better. By that time (mid to late 1980s) Dad only needed to bake a couple of loaves a week because the children had grown up and most had moved away. Still, when I bake bread loaves in a loaf pan I always think fondly of my Dad and his Sunday bread baking.

White Bread

1 package active dry yeast or 1 cake compressed yeast
¼ cup lukewarm water
2 cups milk, scalded
¼ cup butter or margarine
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 teaspoons salt
6 cups all purpose flour

Sprinkle dry yeast or crumble cake yeast into the water. Let stand a few minutes to proof (mixture gets bubbly), then stir until dissolved. Pour hot milk over butter, sugar and salt in a large mixing bowl. Let cool to room temperature. Add yeast mixture and 3 cups of flour. Beat well. Add remaining flour and mix well. If needed, add additional flour, a tablespoon at a time, until dough pulls off spoon cleanly.

Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and satiny, adding a little flour until dough no longer sticks. (Dough should be just slightly sticky/tacky.)

Put into a greased or oiled bowl, turn once, cover with a clean shower cap and let rise in a warm place until double in bulk (about 1½ hours or until, when top is pressed, a dent remains). Punch down. Let rise for 30 minutes.

Shape into two loaves by rolling each half of the dough out into a 11” x 15” rectangle. Starting at the narrow edge, roll up as for a jelly roll. Seal ends and fold under 1” at each end. Put in greased bread pans (9” x 5” x 3 “). Let rise until doubled, about 45 minutes. Brush risen loaves with beaten egg for a shiny crust or with butter or milk for a soft crust.

Bake in preheated 4000 F oven for about 35 minutes. Remove from oven and cool on rack. Loaf will sound hollow when tapped on the bottom if done. Slice when cooled. Makes 2 loaves.

A Time To Remember

I know that today is Frank Sinatra's 100th birthday, but for me the day is special because I'm remembering my mom, who died just a year ago today.

I come from a large family...seven siblings!...and they are all handling the memories and sense of loss in different ways today, and so am I. I did a Facebook post and shared an e-mail round robin with family. I made sure that as many siblings as possible had mom's signature cookie, crescent cookies with powdered sugar coating. They will be enjoyed with cocoa, tea, Irish Mist and any number of other libations. Tomorrow some family members who are gathering at my home for an early Christmas, as well as a late birthday, will get their crescents and we'll toast a wonderful woman...my Mom! You are missed Mother.