Last year I made a terrible horrible mistake. And it seemed like such a good idea. Who doesn’t like Oreo cookies? We don’t have them all the time but when we do they don’t last long. I remember when I was in middle school I had a friend whose name happened to be Dale. I stayed overnight at his house a few times and his mom always placed a bowl of Oreo cookies on the table during breakfast. Breakfast! A bowl of Oreo cookies on the table right next to the box of Cheerios. I couldn’t believe it!
Well, what could be better than Oreo cookies dipped in white chocolate? Let me tell you, I now realize there are lots and lots of things better than Oreos dipped in white chocolate. They were nasty.
In fact, a few days after Christmas, out of sheer boredom and the realization that only two of the thirty-six white chocolate dipped Oreos had been eaten, I stood over the wastebasket with a knife and scraped all the white chocolate off the Oreos. Several of them didn’t survive the surgery and had to be eaten immediately.
For any who are upset already because I called this post “Christmas Is: Baking” instead of something about the spiritual implications of the season, relax.
Christmas is a lot of things to a lot of people, even the ones who despise the whole notion of decorating trees, hanging wreaths and lights, paying huge hangover credit card bills in January, and listening to endless renditions of Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer on the radio. Whatever. Christmas is baking.
Think about it. Are there goodies that are baked at your house that you may not have at any other time? Would Christmas be the same to you if they were missing?
When I was growing up my mother made delicious pecan pies I didn’t like. They looked so good and everyone raved about them. It wasn’t until we lived in Texas many years later I suddenly discovered the delicious wonder that is pecan pie. It was Christmas, so there was pecan pie.
Coffee cake is another one. Coffee cake is a tradition in our family that began about the time the Lamberts arrived in America from Germany in the 1800s. The Stocktons were already here and when the two met, coffee cake was born and has been with us ever since. My coffee cake is better than my mother used to make, and that’s saying a bunch. If there is no coffee cake, it isn’t Christmas.
Christmas cookies! Hours are spent in the kitchen mixing, shaping, cutting, baking, and decorating amazing Christmas cookies. Frustration rears its ugly head when the cookie cutters have sharp corners that refuse to release the cookie dough and instead tear the creation apart.
I don’t understand the whole fascination with ginger-bread houses. Ginger snaps aren’t a favorite, the taste reminds me of a remedy we were forced to ingest when we didn’t feel well which always lead to losing our cookies, if you know what I mean. Lots of people love to decorate ginger-bread houses which most often end up looking something like an underinflated innertube.
Fruit cake! Has there ever been a more misguided name given to anything that is supposed to be edible? Fruit cake is like the Chia-Pet and Clapper. On December 26th every trace is gone. It’s like what happens to round-the-clock Christmas songs on the radio. At midnight on Christmas all vestiges of the season are replaced with the station’s money maker music. Fruit cake is the boat anchor that has finally made it’s way out of the lake and onto the dessert table. Fruit cake is mystery. No one knows where it comes from, who makes it, what’s in it. But it’s not Christmas if there’s no fruitcake.
Really, Christmas is not pies, coffee cake, decorated cookies, ginger bread houses or fruitcake. Christmas is baking which means there is time in the kitchen with members of the family we might not be with at any other time of the year.
Christmas is baking because we reconnect with so many thoughts and feelings of special things as delicious aromas fill the air.
Christmas is baking. It’s such a simple thing but works wonders of togetherness.
A Coffee State of Mind 