I baked all my Christmas sugar cookies on Monday. As I recall, when I made them for the first time I had just been graduated from college, the same year that my Grandma Lola passed away. They were made from her recipe, and had been my father’s favorite. Someone needed to carry on the family tradition, so why shouldn’t it be me? That was thirty-three years ago and I’ve made them every year since.
I can still remember my first attempt, which took place in my sister’s kitchen. The freshly-made dough stuck like glue to the rolling pin and the cutting board. I was getting nowhere and called up family friend Evelyn Gallagher for advice. She suggested lots of flour and perhaps rolling the dough out between sheets of wax paper. The wax paper was a non-starter, but the extra flour helped. I struggled through a couple of batches and then took a break, during which I put the dough in the refrigerator for an hour or so.
That did the trick and the rest of the cookies were a snap. Nowadays, my sugar cookie making is down to an art and more efficient than Santa’s Workshop. I routinely mix, bake and decorate five or six batches in a couple of hours – enough to fill six or seven tins.
Sadly, this is the first Christmas that I am not making cookies for my father, since he is having difficulty with solid food. Back in the day, I would make him a double batch, which he would store either in his bedroom closet or downstairs. He claimed that he rationed himself to one per day, but that would have surprised me, given his sweet tooth.
Grandma also made meringues, which she dolloped onto saltine crackers. It may sound like an odd combination, but the saltiness is a good counterpoint to the sweet. My wife, Pat, makes them for me on occasion and they’re one of my favorites, too.
The third baked item to come out of Grandma’s kitchen was her fudge, my brother John’s favorite. It always disappeared quickly in our house, but there was one occasion when it achieved cross-species educational value. We were spending Christmas in Tahoe and Grandma was with us. We also had a new pet, a Keeshond named L’il Dawg, and Grandma was determined to teach her how to “shake hands.”
Over and over again, a doggie treat was proffered, along with the command “shake.” Then Grandma would pick up L’il Dawg’s paw, shake it, and give her a reward. At first consideration, it appeared that our pooch was slow on the uptake. Or perhaps she was wiser than us all. Maybe she realized that the number of treats she could garner by being a bit “thick” during the training period could be substantial.
It’s like the joke where a group of kids are teasing a foreigner by offering him his choice of either a nickel or a dime. He takes the nickel each time, because it is bigger than the dime, and the kids roll over laughing at how stupid he is. Finally, a passer-by pulls the new kid aside and asks him, “Don’t you know they’re making fun of you?” To which the kid replies, “Sure, I do. But I’ve already got them to give me a dollar in nickels. How much do you think I would have made if I had chosen the dime first?”
Whether or not that was the case, L’il Dawg played her hand (paw?) well, refusing to learn the trick. That is, until Grandma started mixing a batch of fudge, stirring the bowl while sitting down in a chair near the floor heater. She soon had a captive audience and it didn’t take long for L’il Dawg to blow her cover and offer a paw in exchange for a bite of fudge. She didn't get much, because even back then we knew that too much chocolate wasn’t good for dogs.
But L'il Dawg unwittingly sold her soul (or, at least, her stomach) for a fleeting taste of the good stuff. Good girl.
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