Screwing Up Childhood Memories in a Few Easy Steps

When I was a kid, my twisted family had only a few enduring holiday traditions. Yeah, sure, there were the Christmas dresses Mum made (at least when we were younger) and going to Mass on Christmas Eve. For a few years, we'd always pick up a pizza from Pizza Hut on the way home from Mass, and some years we'd unwrap one or even all our presents on Christmas Eve as well. But these rituals, these traditions didn't really last more than a few years. What has lasted is the making o' the holiday sugar cookies.

But we didn't do your run-of-the-mill sugar cookies at the Boeckman Insane Asylum. Well, we did for a while--until my sisters and I learned the art of being snerky bastards. That's when we started "spicing up" the cookies. For example, in 1994, we had three gingerbread people I decorated as the skating beauties of that year: Nancy Kerrigan, Oksana Buy-a-mule and Tonya Harding. (Ahh, remember those fun, knee-wackin' days, Gentle Reader? We were all so innocent then.) For a handful of years, we had Headwound Harrys (yes, we were inspired by an insipid skit from SNL):


Then there were the reindeer with digestive problems, the unfortunate snowmen that had been visited by dogs--need I go on, Gentle Reader?

Passing on a Ritual--Badly
Families need traditions. Since Halloween is the holiday at Chez Boeckman-Walker, I got it in my head that the boy and I could make Halloween sugar cookies together. Since October 31 is quickly approaching, the two of us whipped up the sugar cookie dough using Mum's recipe Friday afternoon while working on reading skills, and it chilled in the 'fridge until Saturday.

I should have known that the cookies were going to be an unmitigated disaster because Saturday just didn't start off well. We discovered Nickelbucket was having an issue that required professional diagnosis and treatment, so the boys took him to the vet while I went off to the gym. Turns out N to the B has a severe bladder infection, but luckily no stones. (Mr. P had experienced bladder stones last year and required surgery. That was not fun.) Then the family's outing to a new Target was just a test of wills since the boy did not seem all that thrilled about cooperating with his parents and keeping his damn hands to himself.

So with all that fun and excitement under my belt, I attempted to roll and cut out sugar cookies. Hmm, where do I begin with all the disasters that followed?

First, the dough stuck to the rolling pin, to the counter, to my fingers, to the bowl, to the cookie cutters, to every blessed thing it came in contact with--even though everything that touched it was either heavily floured or coated with nonstick cooking spray. Second, the cookie cutters looked nifty but were not terribly practical. I don't think I got a decent, recognizable shape out of any of them, but you can judge for yourself, Gentle Reader, in a moment. Third, Mum's recipe didn't note how thick or thin to roll out the dough, so some of the cookie were thick and some were thin, but at least none of the MFers burned. Fourth, the high on Saturday was damn near 90 degrees and I was already have body temperature issues thanks to the allergies and crud I'm still combating, so the heat didn't put me in any kind of mood to deal with hassles.

Long story short: The dough recipe that was supposed to yield five dozen 2- to 2 1/2-inch cookies got us 18 total. Once baked, those 18 cookies looked more like amorphous blobs than any kind of recognizable Halloween icon. Yeah, unmitigated disaster.

Then it came time to decorate....

I've mentioned before, Gentle Reader, how working with buttercream frosting makes me feel sort of artistic. So I was understandably looking forward to decorating some sugar cookies--before the actual baking turned out to be such a disaster. By the time that fiasco was wrapped, all I really wanted to do was get the big bowl of frosting out of my 'fridge and the cooling racks of cookies off my table.

So perhaps asking the boys to help wasn't such as bright thing.... But this project was meant to be the start of some sort of family tradition, so I was determined to make it a family event, come hell or high water.

Fortunately, the decorating wasn't too bad. My orange wasn't as orange as I'd hoped, and I knew better than to try to make the black truly black, so I settled for a nice gray. And because one of the ghosts was badly misshapen, we wound up with a Jabba the Hutt cookie, so I got to mix a nice pukey gray-green and brick red for him. But the boy enjoyed wielding a butter knife to coat his share of the cookies, and the husband had fun both with the Halloween cookies and Jabba. They both enjoyed the cleaning up 'o the leftover frosting.

I wish I could tell you that the cookie themselves at least tasted good, but my allergies have me so plugged up that I can taste or smell anything. The husband says they're good cookies, and the boy wolfed down the one he got to eat for dessert Saturday night. I don't exactly believe that two males eating something is a sign of its quality. Let's face it, there's a reason Mikey from the cereal commercial was a little boy, not a little girl.

If you're searching for a yummy sugar cookie recipe, here's the one from Mum:

Sugar Cookies1 C butter
1 C sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
1/2 t almond extract
1 t baking soda
1 t cream of tartar
2 1/2 C flour
1 t salt

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
   
2. Whisk all dry ingredients together in a bowl.
   
3. Cream the butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and almond extract in a large bowl.
   
4. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the creamed ingredients until blended.
   
5. Chill the dough for 2-3 hours. (I like to make the dough the night before in a container I can seal and stow in the refrigerator.)
   
6. Bake for 7-8 minutes.

Yield: 5 dozen 2- to 2 1/2-inch cookies

Sorry, no nutritional info. Did you really expect any? C'mon, Gentle Reader, Mum used to make cookies with Crisco, for cryin' out loud. D'you really think she was taught to worry about nutritional info?

Now that you've got the recipe, go start yourself a nice holiday calamit--tradition.