Baking Spirits Brighter!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Last year, I stopped having my Cookie party and started a new tradition with my great niece and great nephews.  They loved coming to the Cookie party, but I promised them I would come to their house, stay the night, and bake Christmas cookies with them.  They wanted me to bring Fudge and Vern, but these particular children are hard on Vern.  They do not have a dog and spent the first few Cookie parties screaming in blood curdling fear when the dogs got near them and then swung the other direction the last year and were determined to hound Vern until he wanted to be their friend.  Fudge was perfectly fine with them, but of course, they wanted the dog that did not want them. For my sanity and Vern’s, I decided to move the party to their house.  To appease them, I brought the Labradoodle calendar with both of the dog’s pictures on it for them to keep and went over it page by page with them.  We almost had to report a case of child abuse when we got to Fudge’s page and my niece and her little friend said a dog drinking from a drinking fountain was stupid.  Hayley yelled at me when I said back, “you’re stupid!” and then reminded me of the large age difference.  I don’t care what Hayley says or who is the adult; I am sticking with my opinion until they change their opinion.

 

Last year, we made some complicated Sugar cookies which took forever to bake and decorate, so this year I decided to make it a little simpler.  I brought all the stuff to make an easy Caramel turtle cookie, Chocolate chip cookies, and a new recipe given to me by our own Doris (Knox and Flash) called Melting Snowman cookies.  Before I go any further, I have two things to say, 1) I do not consider Chocolate chip cookies to be Christmas cookies, but I can make them in my sleep and they were requested by my niece 2) Doris is no longer my friend, and I will cover more of that later.  While we were baking, the kids kept accidentally calling me Grandma and I can only concur that the reason was because I gave some great grandmotherly advice as they discussed their friends with me.  My nephew told me one of his friends, Cam, was very mean and told my nephew that his Aunt Laurie wasn’t going to make him any cookies, after my nephew had told him I was coming and I made the best cookies in the world.  When I screamed, “oh no, he didn’t,” in a way that I have heard women scream a hundred times, after finding out that their man cheated with her sister, brother, or mother, on the Maury Povich Show, it elicited lots of giggles from my young audience.  Again, Hayley cut me off, as I was just about to tell my nephew where he could tell Cam to stick his mother’s store bought cookies.  Sometimes, mature people get on my nerves.

 

The first cookies we made were a piece of cake.  All that was required was we stuck a milk chocolate caramel candy on a mini pretzel, baked, and plopped a pecan on top when they came out of the oven.  Easy peasy and my kind of recipe.  Next up, were the chocolate chip cookies and as I said before alone I can make them in my sleep.  Even with my young helpers “helping” things went smoothly and since any mess was at someone else’s house, I didn’t feel as if I needed to call in the Merry Maids or scream, “YOU JUST GOT EGG SHELLS IN MY PRIZED COOKIES.  WHERE IS MY WIRE HANGER?” like my kids will try and tell you I used to do when they “helped” me. 

I also seemed to be more lenient about the amount of cookies my helpers were eating and knew if any of them started exhibiting signs of extreme hyperactivity or started clutching their stomachs and crying out that they felt sick, I knew I could distract Hayley long enough to make a beeline for my car and head to a hotel before she realized I was gone.  It just seemed to be the best option to leave the mature one in charge. We opted to make the Melting Snowman cookies last and realized very early on that Doris must have been playing a cruel joke on me to suggest I make these with young children. 

 

The only blame I will take in regards to these cookies was that I did not read the directions all the way through before I made our initial prototype.  I skipped a few steps and wound up with a marshmallow mess on our first try.  We corrected the glitch and the next sample I made looked like a cross between a scary snowman and a skeleton, but the kids seemed happy, so I turned over the decorating icing and let them have at it.

I knew they would do a better job than John once did when I caught him making my snowmen and gingerbread men anatomically correct.  None of our melting snowman looked anything like the picture and my nephew squeezed the red icing container so hard the icing started squirting out of the top. Either that, or it wasn’t factory sealed to begin with, so we let their mother sample, and I cautioned that if she keeled over, we would know for sure that the red icing was tainted.  I think it was when the red icing was squirting all over everywhere that I asked Hayley to take a picture of our cookies and Facebook it to Doris with the words, “my mother wants to kill you.”  It was right after she texted back, “LMAO” that I knew I had been duped and someday I will find a way to repay her for her “suggestion”.

We had a lot of fun and laughs and I made the mistake of telling them the story about my 20 something nephew and me discussing aunts and great aunts at Thanksgiving. When I told that nephew I was his aunt, but since I was great, he could go ahead and call me his great aunt, he said, “Aunt Laurie, I will give you good, but not great!”  My great niece must have repeated that to me thirty times and my great nephew, not to be outdone, would add, “I’ll give you great, but I won’t give you good.” Every time, I oohed and aahed over my nephew and his “great” remark, my niece would up the ante and add, “but you look young.”  Hey, don’t judge me.  I take compliments any way I can get them and I don’t care if my niece later guessed my weight at 700 pounds (she started at 20 pounds); she may have been confused about poundage, but she was spot on about age.   Unfortunately, it started to snow pretty hard on Saturday and we left earlier than usual so we didn’t get snowed in.  My niece was upset mainly because I had promised to take her to IHop for breakfast and my nephew said, “If you leave early, you don’t love us!”  I tried to explain that Uncle John couldn’t go one more night without me, without sobbing himself to sleep, but no one seemed to believe that statement.  Sometimes, the honesty of young children can be very irritating, although nothing beats the wonder of children at Christmas time.  We all survived and I left them with lots of Christmas cookies and hopefully, some really good memories to boot.

I also took the snowman. Opted to leave Flat Laurie home. She is not much of a baker! Camilla helped me with the great editing!

P.S. Happy Holidays to All.

[Lori, Quincy & Frankie]

haha!  The cookies do look a bit like Nightmare Before Christmas props-but I am sure Doris meant well...The Quintin shot is adorable! and I am sure you did made wonderful memories for the children!