‘Twas the weekend before Christmas, and all through the house,
Was the smell of burning cookies. It smelled kinda gross.
Okay. I’m hoping not. But I always seem to have a few that are Santa and a few that are for Darth Vader. You know. A bit on the dark side. But as long as they aren’t too burned, I’ll embrace the dark side. After all, they are cookies. And it takes a lot to make a cookie truly bad.
Hopefully I can finish up my Christmas baking this weekend. I still need to get two or three batches of different cookies done before the big day arrives. It’s become a bit of a family tradition. I try to recreate some of the cookies my mother made every year. Some times I even get close to her standards. At least she’s nice enough to let me think so.
We have very different approaches to baking. I come at it from a sort of scientific point of view. Kind of like a chemistry experiment. You carefully mix exact amounts of various ingredients and you should end up with the expected result. She has more of a Christmas magic approach. Ingredients fly around the kitchen, land in a bowl and delicious things appear.
The difference in the way we do things has caused some rather heated discussions. Last year we argued over whether or not a “handful” was indeed a proper form of measurement. I pointed out that my hands are considerably larger than hers, so my handful and her handful were very different things. Her reply was, “Just throw in a handful.” It worked, but I think she may have used a bit of that magic I was mentioning.
But baking must be done. It’s a part of the season. There are people who will be expecting little gift bags of goodies from me, which I hope to provide. I already have a few things done, but it’s time to get it finished up.
