Holiday baking

I was out to dinner with a co-worker recently, and she was telling me about a holiday baking tradition in her family. Everyone gets together and bakes cookies and visits and shares their sweets. She lives far from her family now, and seemed a little wistful about enjoying that experience. My family doesn't have any traditions unless one counts ostracizing targeted family members randomly or gossiping about each other privately. I thought her family sounded much nicer than mine. Sometimes the lack of tradition and love in my family makes me a little sad; I suggested that she come to my house and she and I could bake and laugh ourselves silly. Those who know me know that I don't normally prefer to spend my time, holidays or no, with other humans; also, I don't cook. So, my offer surprised even me, and she took me up on it.

We spent today messing up my kitchen and laughing our fool heads off. We had a really terrific time, and I now have enough cookies and candy in my house to send me into sugar shock. The first thing we made were fudge thumbprint cookies. These are excellent, chocolately cookies; they have peppermint extract mixed in, and powdered sugar outside. They are very rich, and would make me want to drink a very large glass of milk, if I drank milk.

I'm not sure rosettes qualify as a cookie, but they are my new favourite thing. These are made with a two-pronged device that looks like it should poke both eyes out at once; the ends of both prongs are threaded, and different shaped "irons" are screwed onto the ends. Heat a pot of cooking oil to somewhere between 265 and 275 degrees; dip the iron into the heated oil to prime it, then dip the iron into a batter that is nearly identical to waffle batter. Submerse the batter-dipped iron in the heated oil and work the batter off the iron. Ideally, the batter will retain the shape of the iron, and you cook it for a minute or so then pull it out of the oil, shaking off any excess. We used a star-shaped iron and a heart-shaped cup. We filled our cups with strawberry jelly and topped it with more powdered sugar.

I learned about spritz cookies today. I had never made, nor heard of, spritz cookies. Tanya has a cookie press from her mother-in-law, which I think is the best thing ever. Spritz cookies are created by first forcing your cookie dough into the tube of a cookie press, then cranking the dough out the end of the tube which has been capped with a sexy shape. Today's shapes were trees, snow-men, and stars. The stars really looked more like nipples, and the snow-men really looked like dog turds, but they were green and flavoured like almonds. I also made shortbread cookies and carmels.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this. Baking and socializing and other such girl behaviour doesn't normally interest me much, but Tanya is enough like me that spending a day cooking with her is actually enjoyable. I am exhausted from a day of baking and laughing, but I had more fun that I expected to and I have so many yummy sweets to show for it.