Post-Christmas Wrap-Up Part I: Candy & Cookies

What does the holiday season mean, if not food? OK. Actually, it means a lot of other things. But this is a food blog, not a metaphysical, philosophical, or even particularly domestic one. Back in early November, I had intended to blog all of my holiday food adventures. Then I got super busy with work and family commitments. I still did a lot of baking and cooking. I just didn’t have time to upload the pictures, type out the recipes and make it all look pretty.

Now it is January. Christmas is over. But since Christmas is such an important time when it comes to food and food-related traditions, I’d like to record some of what I’ve been up to the last few weeks before moving on to 2010′s culinary experiences.

There are a lot of Christmas traditions that I love. But my favorite is Cookie Weekend. My mom, sister, aunts and cousins take over my grandma, Honey’s, kitchen. Everyone brings different recipes and baking supplies. We then spend the whole day making and decorating cookies and candies. Here are a few of the things we made that day, with links to the recipes that I used:

• Pea Blossoms – These are the classic peanut butter cookies with a Hershey’s kiss in the center. To me, they are the quintessential Christmas cookie. I think it’s because my mom only ever made them at Christmas.
• Taffy – For years, my sister wanted to make taffy. Everyone always denied her due to the mess and complication involved. This year, I decided we were going to make taffy. I gave her the recipe and a candy thermometer. She did the rest!
• Hard Cinnamon Candy – We decided this couldn’t be that much different than making taffy. It was super easy. In the process of making this candy and the taffy, we all got a lesson in the stages that sugar goes through when it cooks.



• Sugar Cookies (pictured above) – After all of the other cookies are done, everyone sits around the kitchen table and decorates sugar cookies. We make some pretty and others silly. I love decorating them so much that I actually made an additional 200 cookies on my own and gave them to my employees. The recipe I linked to is the sugar cookie recipe I’ve been using for several years. The first time I made these cookies, my aunt said that they tasted just like my great-grandma’s sugar cookies. I never did get to meet Great-Grandma; but I understand that she was quite the cook and baker. Needless to say, this was one of the best compliments my aunt could have paid me. These cookies are soft, buttery, and not-too-sweet. They stand up perfectly to buttercream frosting (see my last post for the recipe).

This is just a sampling of the good things we made that day. There were also snickerdoodles, truffles, chocolate overload cookies, and probably some other things I am forgetting. Like I said, Cookie Weekend is one of my favorite holiday traditions. It is an excuse to get together with a lot of great women, bake, laugh, and OD on sugar and coffee. What could be better in the midst of all the holiday stress and chaos?