I did it!
I’m breaking a family holiday tradition. The Christmas cookie tradition to be exact. It’s not what you’re thinking, however. I’m not talking about a long-held family recipe that dates back to a couple of grandmothers. I’m not even breaking the leave-a-few-cookies-for-Santa tradition.
What I’m about to do is make Christmas cookies.
The tradition I’m breaking is one I’m not excited to share. As you might know, I’m a foodie. I love cooking, recipe reading and hunting, entertaining with dinner parties, you name it if it has food attached to it, I’m in. The one hole I fall into every year is baking. Ever since my daughter was small, each holiday season we armed ourselves with magazines and cookbooks, dog-earing the beautiful photos and recipes that make our mouth water. We make grocery lists and shop for the needed ingredients, ready with a plan, “this year we’ll do it!” Then we don’t.
We never make the cookies. That’s the tradition I’m breaking this year.
It’s time. I’m going to make them. My daughter is now grown and lives out of state. She just had her first darling baby, and I feel the need, as a new grandma to break this cookie-curse.
Again, as in all the years past, I’m ready. I’ve picked my recipe: Cream Cheese Spritz Cookies. I’ve purchased my ingredients, including crunchy red and green, pink and white-colored sugar to sprinkle across the tops. And most of all, my new Good Grips Cookie Press with 12 stainless steel disks for seasonal shapes is washed and at the ready.
All the anticipation waiting for my cream cheese to soften, I decided to investigate the history of Christmas cookies. It seems they’ve been around a long time. According to Stephanie Stiavetti, in her blog called, Fearless Fresh, Europe is where gingerbread cookies were linked to Christmas in the 1500s. When the dough was cut into shapes of animals and people gingerbread cookies became a yearly treat.
Spritz cookies, the kind I’m making, begins with a lovely buttery dough, squeezed through a press, into classic shapes of trees, snowflakes and the such. These cookies are of Scandinavian origin. However, there’s a debate, because the word spritz is from the German word, Spritzen, which means to squirt. These buttery cookie treats are always my favorite.
Now on to making 8 dozen for myself!