Day 149: A Cookie Cutout Tradition

One of my favorite memories as a kid was our cookie baking adventure the weekend of Thanksgiving at my grandma's house. Every year, on the days immediately following Thanksgiving, me and Cory and Mom and Grandma would bake sugar cut-out cookies. It's a huge recipe which would make dozens upon dozens of cookies. Grams would mix up the dough the night before and it would sit on the back porch in a giant pot overnight to cool down and firm up. Then the next morning, we'd cover the kitchen table in some plasticy tablecloth and pull out the rolling pins. It felt like we'd be cutting out cookies for hours! And then the icing. We'd have different colors and sprinkles and make green snowmen and yellow Christmas trees. My mom was like the Picasso of frosting cookies. Smoothing it on just so, and using sprinkles as another design aspect, like the stripes on the candy canes or the fringe on the stocking. I marveled at it and tried to imitate it, still do today, but I never seem to duplicate her style. :) The entire task was daunting, and when I look back as an adult, I can see the work that went into it, but to me the kid, it was just such a fun day, between the screw ups and the tasting and talking and the joking. Not to mention the recipe was only used once a year and to this day is a recipe for cut-outs I've never tasted outside of my family.

As I got older, and I moved away for school and work, and my brother did the same, the tradition faded out. But the craving for the cookies was always there around the holidays. I think after the first and only year of not having them in the house around Christmas, I started making the effort to include them. Now, every year in the weeks of December leading up to Christmas, I devote a day to mixing up the dough myself and cutting out cookies all afternoon. I've since split the recipe in half, and honestly it doesn't take that long. Plus, there's a sense of pride in maintaining the tradition that keeps me rolling out the dough. I can't wait to one day share this with my kids, give them the memory of Christmas cookies that I had, not to mention, have some helpers in the kitchen. After spending the day rolling and cutting and baking and icing, I'm really thanking my lucky stars this is a one time a year tradition...