Were You Part of a Christmas Cookie Exchange This Year?

Pink and Green Chips. Toffee. Were You Part of a Christmas Cookie Exchange This Year?

When I was growing up, my mother arranged a Christmas cookie exchange every year.

As we lived in seven houses by the time I was 11, she probably used this an excuse to meet the neighbors.

Her meringues were my favorite.

Brandy Snaps

Back then, you could get pink peppermint and green mint chips, so her meringues were perfectly suited to Christmas.

They were light, sweet and showy.

This is still my definition of a perfect cookie for a Christmas cookie exchange.

What About Now?

Several years ago, a new friend, Barbie Michelich, started inviting me to her cookie exchanges.

She talked about how some friends were uninvited if their cookies did not live up to her standards.

The first year I made the light, fried waffle cookies I only ever make at Christmas or Easter.

I’d been given the iron for making these light cookies as a wedding gift and learned how to make them.

You have to melt Crisco to just the right temperature.

You have to heat the snowflake iron for just the right amount of time.

You have to lift the cookie out of the hot oil at just the right moment.

You have to wait for the cookies to cool before dusting them with powdered sugar.

But, if you do all that right, they are light, sweet and showy.

I was in. Barbie invited me back the next year.

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What Do You Do for a Follow On?

The next year, I decided to make my other occasional Christmas cookie treat – Brandy Snaps.

A recipe from the New York Times Cookbook that was one of the cookbooks we bought as part of a cookbook club forty years ago, Brandy Snaps had been a favorite of every crowd I’d ever served them to.

Here’s the recipe for Brandy Snaps from the New York Times Cookbook:

¼ cup light corn syrup

¼ cup molasses

½ cup butter (one stick)

1 cup sifted flour (Note: does anyone actually sift flour anymore?)

2/3 cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon ground ginger

2 teaspoons brandy

1. Preheat the oven to slow (300 degrees F.)

2. Heat the syrup and molasses to boiling. Remove from heat and add butter.

3. Sift together the flour, sugar and ginger. Add gradually, while stirring, to molasses mixture. Mix well. Add brandy.

4. Drop by half-teaspoonfuls three inches apart on a greased cookie sheet. (Note: they are really serious about only half a teaspoon. These cookies spread out to about 3 inch circles when they are baking). Bake ten minutes.

5. Remove from oven, loosen one cookie at a time and roll over handle of a wooden spoon.

(Note: with practice, you can just roll them up gently, without the spoon).

Slip off the spoon carefully. Serve filled with whipped cream.

(Note: I have never filled them with whipped cream because you’d have to serve them right away or they’d get soggy. I tie them in a colorful ribbon and put them in a cookie tin, where they will stay fresh for several days.)

(Note: if they start getting too stiff and brittle to roll, slip the cookie sheet back in the oven to soften them again.)

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Have You Ever Failed?

This year, I deviated by trying a new recipe from one of several cookie books I own.

Sweet? Check.

Light? Toffee is not light.

Showy? They melted all over the plate.

Next year, by special request, it’s back to Brandy Snaps.

It’s Not About the Cookies

It’s the friendship and camaraderie, of course.

This year, of seven women, we had two breast cancer survivors of a year’s standing, and three of us who were growing our hair for locks of love

An eighth had just lost her sister suddenly, days before. We sent her the cookies we normally would have shared that night.