Cookies, Christmas and Otherwise

It being that time of year when one's thoughts turn to Christmas cookies, I've been baking with the small child. She's a great helper monkey, loves to turn the mixer on, dumps with abandon, eats flour straight up. We made a batch of gingerbread the other day, rolled out and cut into bears and bells and trees, undecorated save for the few she scored and poked with a toothpick before they went in the oven. There's twice-baked shortbread to be baked tonight, using an Alice Medrich recipe found at the redoubtable Smitten Kitchen - and it is the best shortbread ever.

And last night, the girlie and I made my favorite Christmas cookies ever - well, as of last year anyway, when I found the recipe on the intertubes - a crispy, chewy, peppermint oatmeal shortbread kind of thing called a Candy Cane Crisp.

This, people, is why I was looking for candy canes the other days and cursing the gods for having invented the abominable fruit-flavored candy canes which were all I was able to find. Luckily, I texted the husband who scored a box of the real thing. Half of them were broken, but hey - the first step in the recipe is to crush the candy canes.

It's a simple recipe - no egg, no leavening - just butter, sugar, flour, oatmeal and crushed candy canes, with more candy canes sprinkled on top giving them a nice pink sheen. You'll want to eat every last one of them because the texture is awesome and the flavor is better.

Candy Cane Crisps

1 cup butter, softened
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
1 1/3 cups flour
1 1/2 t. vanilla
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 t. salt
about 3/4 cup crushed candy canes (I ran them through the blender)

Preheat oven to 325.
Beat butter and 1 cup of powdered sugar until creamy; beat in vanilla. In another bowl, stir together flour, oats & salt; gradually add to butter mixture, blending thoroughly. Add 1/4 cup of crushed candy canes and mix until well combined.

Roll dough into 3/4-inch balls, then roll in remaining powdered sugar to coat. Place balls about 2 inches apart on greased and flour-dusted cookie sheets. Gently flatten cookies with a fork making a criss-cross pattern with the tines. Sprinkle each cookie with about 1/2 t. of crushed candy canes, or just pile it on top if you're five years old.

Bake for 18 to 20 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Let cool on baking sheets for 2-3 minutes, then transfer to racks and let cool completely. Store in an airtight container. Makes about 4 dozen, depending on how much dough the five year old eats, and whether you really can make 3/4-inch balls.

(Note: 13 full sized candy canes grinds up to about a cup of dust.)

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Over the weekend, I got an email from one of my sister's friends. She'd grown up down the street from us, and her mother was a bit of a foodie who catered as a hobby. Occasionally, for pocket change, I worked KP for her mother when she was catering or having fancy dinner parties.  

Attached to the email was a scan of a handwritten recipe, a cookie recipe that I'd given her mother when I  was eleven years old.  Susie and her mother were doing their holiday baking, and were about to make a batch of these molasses cookies, lo these thirty six years later.  And clearly Lee's made them often - the card shows the evidence of dribbles and greasy fingerprints (oh, and that's not my handwriting, it's hers).  I haven't made these cookies in a long long time, but they were terrific. What's more, I remember exactly where that recipe came from: the mother of an elementary school classmate who lived around the corner from us.  I wonder what ever happened to her.

Cookies kind of worm their way into your soul, part of the memories we make and remake and call our own.  What are your favorite cookies to make?