Our Christmas Tradition

Last year it was the Potato Chip Cookies. I was making cookies with my mom and she remembered something called the “potato chip cookie” from when she was little so she called my grandmother to ask for the recipe. We knew right away something was off. We were mixing something absurd like six sticks of butter, four cups of sugar, 2 cups of flour and one quarter of a cup of crushed potato chips. We both wondered how these ingredients were magically going to turn into the goodness my mom remembered…but we went with it. Maybe it’d be a Christmas miracle. We ended up with two giant tubs of the most inedible cookies that have ever existed. The more we piled on top of the cookie sheets for baking, the less it seemed we were making a dent in that hideous mountain of dough.

This year started off with me mixing flour into the wrong bowl on our very first set of cookies. Not to worry, we sorted that out in record time and some delicious coconut/cranberry/chocolate creations were underway. We started the next recipe and scoffed at the cookbook when we got 1/3 of the way through the instructions and read, “refrigerate at least two hours or overnight.” Nothing like getting stopped dead in your tracks. So we rolled up all of the dough and tossed it into the refrigerator. Next recipe, please… We started that one only to find another, “refrigerate four hours.” Dead end. Followed by one right after the other. By about 7 p.m. we had two set of cookies to show for our nine hours of work and we were both just about over making cookies. But we kept at it and when the clock struck 8:45 p.m., that place turned into a cookie factory. The refrigerator was full of what felt like 17 different types of dough just waiting to be cooked. So, we rolled, dipped, and scooped everything onto cookie sheets and slowly but surely our cookies came to life. I won’t talk about the tray of almond cookies we lost when *someone* lost hold of the parchment paper and it slipped to its demise between the bottom of the oven and the door.

In about four years, I think we’ll have our system perfected. Our dough will be made the night before, we won’t need to run to the grocery store in the middle of a recipe to buy almonds, and we’ll definitely make the day shorter than 13 hours. But, until then, I’m still enjoying our tradition of “The Great Series of Cookie Mishaps.”

I hope you’re all enjoying the lights, sounds, and smells of the holiday season.