Not like that's a huge change from the rest of the year, but since my almost-12-year-old was little I've taken it upon myself to manage December. Because no one else was doing it.
So there's a family birthday six days before Christmas, hence the burning question: when do the Christmas cookies get baked?
I've whittled what was once an annual four types of cookies down to two. I realize this is nothing compared to the lengths some people go to. Both types require advance preparation and refrigeration. One requires time-consuming participation, several hours' worth if possible by all able children, to ice and sprinkle sugar upon cutout sugar cookies I have prebaked, probablt late at night when no one was looking or lurking or hanging on my legs in the kitchen or threatening to touch hot hot hot ovens. It's a ritual, and despite some halfhearted begging I've been unable to jettison this one from the December traditions.
See, it's all the fault of the birthday. Birthdays require cake. But after eating cake, who wants cookies?
So one year we made some token cookies so some could at least be left for Santa (apparently this is sacrosanct), and the rest of the uncooked undecorated dough languished in the refrigerator until sometime in January, at which time it had expired. Oops.
Another year I made cookies with a three-day-old baby nearby. Won't be doing THAT again; what was I thinking?
But make the cookies too soon and you run the risk of having to make a second batch in order for there to be some left for Christmas.
And then there's the freaking cake.
So it requires balance. And careful planning.
And now you know what I lay awake thinking about every December.
About this time of year I start freaking out.
Not like that's a huge change from the rest of the year, but since my almost-12-year-old was little I've taken it upon myself to manage December. Because no one else was doing it.
So there's a family birthday six days before Christmas, hence the burning question: when do the Christmas cookies get baked?
I've whittled what was once an annual four types of cookies down to two. I realize this is nothing compared to the lengths some people go to. Both types require advance preparation and refrigeration. One requires time-consuming participation, several hours' worth if possible by all able children, to ice and sprinkle sugar upon cutout sugar cookies I have prebaked, probablt late at night when no one was looking or lurking or hanging on my legs in the kitchen or threatening to touch hot hot hot ovens. It's a ritual, and despite some halfhearted begging I've been unable to jettison this one from the December traditions.
See, it's all the fault of the birthday. Birthdays require cake. But after eating cake, who wants cookies?
So one year we made some token cookies so some could at least be left for Santa (apparently this is sacrosanct), and the rest of the uncooked undecorated dough languished in the refrigerator until sometime in January, at which time it had expired. Oops.
Another year I made cookies with a three-day-old baby nearby. Won't be doing THAT again; what was I thinking?
But make the cookies too soon and you run the risk of having to make a second batch in order for there to be some left for Christmas.
And then there's the freaking cake.
So it requires balance. And careful planning.
And now you know what I lay awake thinking about every December.