And so it begins, that time of year where I turn into the Little Red Hen asking who will help me make the cookies.  “Not I”, said…everybody.  Excuses from A to Z, but my very favorite is the “they don’t taste the same if we help” defense. Yeah yeah yeah.  The fact is I enjoy the cookie making escape.  I put on my favorite music, I get in the rhythm of the repetition, and the smell is intoxicating.

I begin with the sturdiest cookies.  The butter cookies come first, rich buttery vanilla flavors that melt in your mouth.  This is an old recipe that uses only the yolks of the eggs, rich bourbon vanilla, and powdered sugar instead of granulated.  It is luscious.  Made three weeks ahead of time; when it gets closer to Christmas I make them into sandwich cookies filled with Nutella.

The other sturdy cookie is the anisette cookies.  This recipe is from Nanny LoConti.  The boys usually get together each year to make them at the deli.  They use the huge stand mixer, the commercial ovens, and a gun formed from a calking kind of thing.  Obviously, I don’t have a deli, nor do I have a caulking gun kind of thing and I was lucky enough to escape with the recipe so I improvise.

The recipe had to be halved so that it would fit in my Kitchenaid stand mixer.  It’s a very solid dough so I use the bread hook. I once, and only once, tried to mix it with a normal paddle but the mixer was groaning and straining and just simply refused to move after a while.  Then I had to figure out the extruder kind of thing. Hmmm.

I am so damn clever some times.  I bought the sausage attachment for the mixer so instead of filling sausage I’m extruding the dough so I can form them into the signature braid-like shapes so easily recognized by my mother.   There is a knack to it, a rhythm, and a bit of dexterity required.  As the dough is extruded I measure it against the palm of my hand, clip it off with my finger and drop it on to a plate as I count them off by the dozen.  Once I’ve got a dozen, I twist them into the braid and place them on the sheet pan.  Get two pans done and into the oven they go.  But any number of things can happen in this little operation.  The strands can stick together on the plate, they can break on the sheet pan, and I can, and have, increased the mixer speed instead of turning it off.   That’s always fun, an I Love Lucy moment.

But all in all, the concentration takes your mind off of everything.  The music lurks in the background and the smell is like the best kind of aroma therapy the spa has to offer.  It is the Zen of Christmas.

I have containers especially for the zillion dozen cookies I make every year and a little mistake container for those who burst through the door (usually looking for their keys because they’ve locked themselves out) and stop in their tracks saying, “What is that smell?  What is happening here?”  As if they didn’t know.  Off they go with a bag of “mistakes” to enjoy later on, if they make it to later on.

I don’t know if everyone enjoys the cookies as much as I enjoy the process of making them. Little Red Hen be damned.  I don’t know if everyone knows where the recipes come from or that they will be gone at some point if no one learns to enjoy making them going forward. I don’t know if anyone appreciates the love that goes into them or the honor it is to continue the tradition but I know like I know that there are never any left come New Years Day.

Well, accept for the ones that Sandra stashes in her freezer for emergency consumption on a really bad day (those get made closer to the day).  So OK, maybe I don’t know but I have a funny feeling that if there were no cookies there might not be any crumbs in the beds of those sneaking them up to their rooms, there might not be the saving grace cookies that can be eaten by the celiac disease crowd, and I wouldn’t have the wonderful Christmas celebration I have each year by avoiding all malls in lieu of my kitchen and all its comforts.  Next week, snowballs, fig chiucharidi, Sandra’s favorite Italian cookies with the anise icing and nonpareils.  The week after that, pignoli nut cookies and finishing touches.  Stay tuned.