Ho, ho, ho, ya’ll!
Once a year (and once a year only!) I get the urge to make Christmas cookies!
They are the same cookies I make other times of the year but making them in December makes them Christmas cookies. For some reason I only pick one type of cookie. This year it was peanut butter. I had been sitting in the sun on my screened porch reading magazines and sipping iced tea and could have remained there until dusk. Alas, I came across a photo of the perfect peanut butter cookie and immediately dashed to my computer to read 4, 321 recipes for peanut butter cookies. Then I resorted to my old standby which I have made forever. Nonetheless, something about Christmas cookies compels me to make a big mess and experiment, not such a good thing since these cookies are not to be stuffed in my Santa cookie jar (well, not many) or own personal cookie-keeper, AKA my belly, but gifts for neighbors and friends. The ingredients were more or less measured, my apron forgotten until I looked down at my clean Christmas sweater now frosted with sugar and flour, and the oven pre-heated to more or less the correct temperature. Then I listened to the evil elf in my ear and instead of palming perfectly round balls, rolling them in sugar and criss-crossing them with a fork into normal peanut butter cookies, I decided to go free form and just splat them on the cookie sheet and see how they came out. Christmas miracle: they came out perfectly, the free form creating a bit of peanut butter lace that I could hardly restrain from breaking off each cookie and eating myself. The secret ingredient of Christmas cookies is, of course, love and so there are no bad or wrong Christmas cookies, not even the first (Oops I forgot to watch the time!) batch which gets a bit too brown, but nonetheless is still delicious, warm and ripe for tasting, leaving a few for Santa and putting the rest in the cookie jar for a midnight munch. Merry Christmas!
PS: Next year, I plan to scrap the apron (day or night) and create peanut butter frosting for the cookies!
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