One Christmas tradition that always makes me feel close to my mom is baking Christmas cookies. Mom loved Christmas, and there were things that always had to be done to do Christmas right. One of these was baking cookies. Early on we kids were invited into the process of decorating, mixing the dough, and eventually even making our own.
As I became an adult, this cookie making stuck with me, and cond Thanksgiving weekend every year I know that it’s time to break out the mixing bowls and pans. It’s Christmas time and you make cookies, from scratch…no mixes or (shudder) Pillsbury dough sticks. You make cookies, and the number you bake is a comment on how well you did (I will never forget the year Mom made 100 dozen). You make cookies, and you give them away.
Although I have experimented with various recipes, over time two have become my staples. No matter what I may try, mince pies, m&m cookies, haystack cookies, I always make these two.
The first are called Sour Cream cookies. I found the recipe in a book of cookie recipes I had a long time ago. It’s a very basic drop cookie with sour cream mixed in to the dough to temper the sweetness and give the cookie a light chewiness. Some people call them snickerdoodles because they are topped with cinnamon sugar, but they aren’t exactly the same. People who love these cookies can’t get enough. This year my daughter is not coming home for Christmas, and the one thing she asked was the recipe for the sour cream cookies.
The other is a recipe that cane from my mom. In my family we always called them Magic Cookies, though later in life I have heard them referred to as Hello Dollies, which I love. These are bar cookies with a graham cracker crust and chocolate chips, walnuts, and coconut, all topped with condensed milk. It’s an incredibly easy recipe, especially relative to how wonderful the cookies end up tasting.
One interesting thing to me is that everyone in my family and to whom I have gifted cookies liked one more than the other. There are sour cream cookie people and magic cookie people and usually there is no way to predict who is who. The light sweetness of one or the much richer darker taste of the other, everyone has a preference.
Luckily there are lots of cookies to go around, so if you want to test, just come on by.
Thanks mom for giving me the gift of cookie making and the secret that baking cookies opens the holidays even more than eating cookies does.
Image: take your pick.
We call them Wonder Bars.