It is Christmas time, a very big time of year for the lowly cookie. Much like merchandise in the stores, if they don't make it in December, it's not going to happen for them. Cookies have never been my favorite dessert. If you lined up a cake, a pie and a platter of cookies I would always take the cake first and the cookies last. Cookies are the everyday where cake is special.
Over the years, I've tried to make friends with the cookie. When my kids were little I did the cookie thing at Christmas year after year trying to duplicate my own childhood memories. There was the Swedish Spritz, complete with a cookie press and all the trouble of decorating them, cut out sugar cookies, chocolate crinkles, jelly filled thumbprints and pecan sandies. But as the years have gone by I am as close as I have ever been to banning Christmas cookies from my oven door.
First of all, they are just a lot of trouble to make. Cookie batter is thick and hard to manage. It will burn up a portable mixer in no time at all. It is the #1 reason to invest in a KitchenAid mixer. A recipe of cookies will make 5 dozen tasty treats but that's 5 times of loading and unloading a cookie sheet. My favorite time saver as a young mother was to make a recipe of chocolate chip cookies and spread it all out into a jelly roll pan and bake it. TA DA! Cookies are done in one fell swoop! I did this long past the point that it was necessary for me to save time simply because the repetition of spooning batter on and scraping cookies off of a cookie sheet bored me. A batch of cookies takes hours where a cake is in and out of the oven in 30-40 minutes.
Cookies have a tendency to become dry and crumbly within minutes of their exit from the oven. Now, I will eat the crumbs of almost anything but 9 times out of 10, cookie crumbs go in the trash. After all the work of baking those things, you put them in a bag or cookie jar and as it comes toward your mouth it starts to fall apart. That doesn't happen to cake or pie because it's on a fork. Try forking a cookie and see what happens.
Cookies have a feeling of the ordinary. The action of spooning cannot compare with the drama of pouring batter into cake pans. There is a specialness to cake that just isn't there with cookies. It is light and airy where cookies are flat and solid. We take care of cake. We layer it and frost it and even try to make it look pretty on top. Not cookies. One of my favorite cookies of my childhood were Chocolate Frosted Cookies. Why? They had the soft texture of cake and frosting on them - yes, every one of them.
There's a reason Christmas cookies make a great Christmas gift. You look at them and you see the hours of dedication that went into just making them, let alone decorating them. Well you won't get cookies from me. I'm a bread, cake, nuts, and fudge kind of girl at Christmas time. Did I make cookies this year? Yes, one batch of Chocolate Crinkles and only because I remember how much my family likes them. It is the reminder of how homemade is filled with more than a recipe and ingredients. This we do for love.
So on Thursday night, I will set the cake aside and let the lowly cookie take center stage.
3 comments:
Ooh! I LOOOOOVE me some cookies!
Given a choice between cookies, cake, and pie, I most certainly go cookie first and cake last. Cookies are so chewy and dense with flavor. They have different bits that bring different texture and flavors to each bite. And, there's so much variety! Hard, soft, fluffy, dense, chunky, simple, seasonal, and extravagant cookies. They're teeny tiny treats that are easy to eat on the go, and oh-so-easy to overindulge in. They give room to exploration (what is in this!?!), but if you don't like it, you don't eat another. If you DO like it, you can eat as many as you can without counting (unlike a cake, in which you would go: OH MY GOD, I ate half a cake!!). Plus, I can sample BEFORE I serve. How many times have I served a crappy cake before I knew it was crappy? But, if I made a bad batch of cookies, it'll never see the light of day because I catch it first!
Don't get me wrong: there are bad cookies, but there are also bad cakes. Cookies are sometimes tedious, but I guess it's all a matter of appreciation... because I think cakes are a hassle and sometimes tedious.
I have to revel in our similarities and differences in the baking world. It takes all kinds to fill a kitchen with love. Your baking is the best and I would take one of YOUR cakes any day over anything else in the room, but that's because your cakes are perfect. :)
You raise some very interesting points in defense of the lowly cookie, mainly that whole idea of taste testing. I do like that! But I must make one correction. There is no perfect. Especially in my kitchen!
I guess I just like to "play". With cookies I can (and do) make them look different and get to add several "surprises" in them. Plus, those Swedish cookies were taught to me by my Grandmother Larson and they bring back so many memories of being in her kitchen. There was no mixer, just hands; the cookie press was hand-crank; and there were NO decoration on the cookies at all. That is my "corruption" of the Spritz. As I remember there were 2 shapes we did: esses and ohs. Some meaning in Swedish for Christmas...that's lost in the fog of my brain. And next year I will bake those cookies again and do them as my Grandmother taught me....plain.
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