Most of us never showed up for the second day. “We don’t skip steps!” she once commanded after I tried to jump from the #6 setting right to the #4 setting of the pasta roller when making lasagna together. She didn’t mind yelling if it got her point across. Even after agreeing to do a demo, she woke up long before you did and baked everything by 8 a.m., a form of psychological warfare against the laziness of every generation that came after hers. On lightly floured surface, roll each half of dough 3/16 inch thick. Stir in flour, baking soda and cream of tartar. None of this is surprising given that cooking with my grandma was a bit like the first day of an apprenticeship to Gordon Ramsay. In large bowl, mix 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, the butter, 1 teaspoon vanilla, almond extract and egg until well blended. Have fun finding the hidden stories in Mrs. Bake until done.” Ingredient quantities changed in different family members’ transcriptions. Enjoy Christmas stories and Christmas activities with your child. The original recipes, written in her meticulous cursive, were curiously devoid of detail. Maybe we made one or two in the few years since her death, but we didn’t even come close to her output. When my grandmother passed away in 2014, she left behind some recipes, but nobody stepped forward to follow in her footsteps and become pop-up cookie factories whenever the need arose. They were there for as long as I could remember. Butter take your butter out of the fridge 30-60 minutes before you start to let it soften Granulated sugar Vanilla extract Use 100 pure vanilla extract for best taste. Most were served by the hundreds if not thousands at every major family event I can think of, piled in tiers on banquet tables and protected from premature eating by elaborate ruffles of bound plastic wrap. Her spritz cookies were buttery magic to me, miracles of uniformity and green sprinkles, the gateway cookie that I fell for as soon as I could eat solid food. Pizzettes, whose strange name has always been synonymous with the chocolate, spice, and citrus flavors that simply meant Christmas to us Italians. Combine flour, baking powder and salt add, blending well. Chewy-soft molasses-y hermit slices with the faintest sheen of browned butter glaze. A few Ziploc bags of her cookies in the freezer could get us through the holidays and well into the New Year when rationed carefully. “204 pizzettes !” They were currency to her kids and grandkids as well. Ingredients 1 cup unsalted butter (softened to room temperature) cup white granulated sugar 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract 1 large egg (. “145 biscotti this year!” she would bellow. She was obsessed with counting everything and anything she made. My grandmother, Erminia “Minnie” Morocco, treated Christmas cookies like a form of currency. Velour couches, candy bowls full of Hershey’s Kisses, gallon jugs of my grandfather’s punchy basement Zinfandel, and a china cabinet that rattled so loudly my cousins and I would compete to see who could set it rocking and tittering the most when running past. These six cookies bring me back to Worcester, Massachusetts, circa 1988, with Duraflame logs in the fireplace and Mitch Miller booming from the turntable.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |