Advent Calendar - Christmas Cookies

     Christmas cookies are a staple in the Rodesky house hold just as they were in the Langston house. Both my mom and grandma would bake like there was no tomorrow. I remember mom would always bake a variety of goodies. Everything from haystacks, peanut clusters, and divinity to sugar cookies and trust me I could go on. With Grandma and Grandpa it was always fudge, they would cut into one inch thick squares, and then warp them in wax paper. I don’t know exactly why they would wrap each piece, maybe they wanted you to feel like you were unwrapping a present of yummy goodness.  My fudge till this day looks like sticky mud; they had a secret, wish I would have asked.

     My favorite cookie was and still is sugar cookies with homemade powder sugar icing. I can clearly remember the first time I was able to help mom make the cookies. She pulled out all of the ingredients that we would need along with the brown and milky white glass mixing bowl. Then she wrapped this yellow and brown apron, with brown rick-rack on the edges, around my waist. She would then but her matching apron on, both of them were made by her grandmother, one was moms and the other one was her moms, my grandma. I still have both of those aprons, I think this might be the year my daughter wears it while making cookies.

     I was allowed to place all of the ingredients in the mixing bowl minus the eggs. I guess the idea of me cracking the eggs on the counter top and floor wasn’t festive. My favorite part of making the cookies was when mom would pour the flour into the sifter and I got to sift. I don’t know what the big deal was with that, it wasn’t anything fancy a metal sifter with a red painted wooden knob that I would turn.

      It never failed once everything was mixed you could find my dad eating some of the cookie dough. He and both my brothers had their favorite part of making the cookies and that was it, eating the dough.  We would roll out the dough and use our Christmas cookie cutters in shapes of stars, Santa, holly leaf and I believe a Christmas bell. Once they were baked and cooled it was time to for the icing and sprinkles. Now this was and still is the “BEST” part. We would lay the paper bags out on the counter top, space the cookies out evenly then begin icing. See I would always add a little extra icing on the cookies so it would run off onto the paper bags. Once the cookies were picked up I would take my finger and wipe up all the icing that accidently, yeah right, dripped off the cookies and lick it off. Yes, this was one of my favorite parts of making sugar cookies and still it.  

     Here in the Rodesky house we still bake all of the Christmas goodies including the sugar cookies. As tradition would have it my husband and sons have taken the place of my dad and brothers. As soon as everything in mixed in the bowl you can always find them grabbing a piece of cookie dough and eating away. My daughter and I can be found dragging our fingers in the icing that drips off the cookies, like mother like daughter. Yummy!