As long as I can remember, my mom did a TON of baking at Christmas. I loved helping her. It seemed that she would always start at the end of November and bake every weekend until Christmas. We had a big freezer in the garage where she would keep everything until it was time to pack it up and give it to friends and neighbors.
The standard things were: pecan snowballs, peanut butter balls, cookie press cookies, magic cookie bars, chocolate chip cookies, fudge, baklava...that's all I can think of right now. I have specific memories with peanut butter balls and the cookie press. I think my mom quadrupled the recipe for peanut butter balls. I can remember years when all 4 of us were forced to roll and dip those thing for HOURS and HOURS! The cookie press we had belonged to my grandma, and we inherited it after she died. I can remember making the dough and adding food coloring to a few of the blobs and then sitting there cranking out all the different shapes.
As most of you know, we're not exactly a petite family...we like our sweets, for sure! So...a freezer FULL of cookies and other baked goods was extremely tempting. For several years, mom would just put the stuff in there in Ziploc baggies. So obviously, it was pretty easy to sneak a few out of each bag. Frozen chocolate chip cookies are awesome, by the way. I remember one year when she went to the freezer to get everything to package, she only had about half of what she actually baked. She wasn't very happy. She learned her lesson though, because the following year, my dad invented what we now call The Cookie Safe.
The Cookie Safe is pretty crude in its design, but worked (for the most part). It consisted of a giant bucket that had a lid. My dad drilled a hole in the bucket that had a corresponding hole in the lid. And then...he put a padlock on it. How rude! How's a girl supposed to get a frozen cookie if you're going to lock them up!! This pretty much solved the problem until we figured out that you could still move the lid a little, reach your hand in and grab a couple of whatever was on top. Seriously...do you think they could really keep me from my cookies??
2 comments:
I love Christmas Memories Week! This is fun. And you're totally right...frozen chocolatat chip cookies are the best.
This is funny- I also loved your rewrapping presents one. My husband and his siblings did that but their mom did take everything back to the store. Ouch.
Post a Comment