The Tirckiest Spritziest Christmas Cookies

CHRIST IN WINTER: reflections on faith from a place of winter for the years of winter…

[Today is replete with Academy of Parish Clergy friends. Paul Binder, who passed along the “Florida Wonderland” song, reminds me that he is from Mt. Vernon, IN, not New Albany, which I should have remembered, since my Oakland City teams played in the same conference,” The Pocket Athletic Conference,” as Mt. Vernon, although he moved there at 15 after growing up in Seattle. He is a Purdue grad, which punishment surely must absolve him from all the rest of his sins. Another FL APC friend, David Imhoff, says he is already singing “Florida Wonderland” at the nursing homes and other gatherings where he ministers at this time of year. And APC friend Suzanne Schaeffer-Coates posted recently that she was going to bake her trickiest cookies because middle son Malcolm said they are his favorite. Helen couldn’t stand not knowing just how tricky they were so asked, and got this reply…]

My trickiest cookies are what you'd call Spritz cookies, and I call "cookie gun" cookies.

In my first church there was an old lady, who I thought was older than God. She made the best Christmas cookies, and my favorite ones were these Spritz cookies. She gave me the recipe, and I bought a cookie gun in a yard sale, and set to work. The cookie gun made me crazy, as I could never get the timing right and I'd either have too much blob or not enough, and when it did start pushing out the cookies, I had to go likity split to keep up with it.

It turns out that Jane had given me the recipe by memory and had messed it up, so the ruined cookies weren't entirely my fault. The next Christmas, she drove herself to my house with her cookie gun, her recipe, and her cookie sheets. She made me buy a pound of Land O' Lakes butter (and leave it out the night before - she even called me the night before to make sure I'd put the butter out - to soften), Pillsbury flour (not Gold Medal), fresh McCormack Almond Extract, sugar and whole milk, and large eggs and PAM. When she got there, she made me lay out all of her's and my cookie sheets, and then mix the dough. The last cup has to be mixed by hand (literally, by hands). Then the assembly line, poom, poom, poom, pop out those cookies. Her hand operated cookie gun just spat them out perfectly. Then one sheet at a time, into the oven. 4 minutes...turn the sheet around facing the other way. 4 more minutes...out. New sheet in, set timer, take cookies off hot sheet onto cooling racks. Wash sheets between batches.

I was exhausted when we were finished. She was fresh as a daisy and helped me clean up, and took her stuff home with her - leaving me all the cookies, because she was going to make another batch at home.

For Christmas she gave me $$ to buy new cookie sheets and cooling racks. The following years, as she got even older, she came down to supervise my baking "her" cookies, and sat in a rocking chair and rocked baby Henry while I made them under her watchful eye. After she died, I continue to make the cookies every year, enjoying the memories, but hating the hard work and my electric cookie gun. I'd try other cookie guns that I bought in subsequent yard sales, but couldn't get the pressure right.

As I said in my FB "post", I stopped making them two years ago, but last year Malcolm said that he missed them, so I knew I had to make them this year. Last week, looking for something else in Walmart, I saw a $10.00 cookie gun that said that it measured out the exact amount of dough each time. So on the appointed day, I got out my cookie sheets, "Pammed" them, made the dough (butter softening all night, new Pillsbury flour, fresh eggs, whole milk, fresh almond extract, sugar, etc.), opened the cookbook to Jane's handwritten recipe, and set to, channeling her in my thoughts. The new cookie gun worked a treat, and in less time than I would have thought possible, they were done (yes, I turned the cookie sheets every four minutes), I was cleaned up, and had two tins of cookies.

Malcolm is happy, I am happy, and in heaven, I know that Jane is happy.



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