Very often, Susan and I will make Christmas cookies.  We don’t do it every year but we do it most years.  Sue is spectacular with Sugar Cookies and five or ten other types of holiday offerings.  I am pretty good at making two classic German cookies.    

You truly have to be in the Christmas spirit to jump in to this project.  This year we felt the rapture.  We were chatting about making cookies with our good friends, Ruth and Steve and John and Mary.  We asked if they would like to join us.  We could double or triple our recipes and make a pile of cookies for everyone.  “Great idea! We’re In!” 

This always seems like a simple, idyllic exercise.  We will drink egg nog and listen to an array of Christmas carols.  Maybe, a little Schnapps.  Perhaps the temperature will drop and we will see a few snow flurries in Florida.  We forget all of the challenges we have had making cookies in the past.  For example, last year we used self rising flour instead of all purpose flour and baked up a bunch of tennis balls. The revisionist memory may happen because there is always a twelve month interval between cookie making sessions or perhaps our cognitive skills are trending in the same direction as Joe Biden’s.  

Not with standing, we move boldly forward with a lot of positive energy.  We are planning on making three types of cookies: classic Sugar Cookies and two German favorites, Springerles and Lebkuchens.  We will start the process at 2:00 PM, finish 450 cookies by 6:00 PM, have a few drinks and nice dinner around 6:30 or 7:00.  Maybe we will end the evening watching White Christmas.

Reality starts to set in when we review the recipes.  The Springerle and Lebkuchens are truly family heirlooms.  They have been passed on to me by mother.  She actually got them from her great grandmother.  A lot of unusual ingredients: anise seed, anise extract, almond extract, candied lemon peel, candied citron and Baker’s Ammonia.  A lot of steps for each cookie.  In fact, when you lay the recipes side by side, this cannot be completed in less than three days.  I am convinced that Einstein and Fermi decided to split atoms because it was easier than making their grandmothers’ Christmas cookies.

What the hell!  We all are retired.  It’s Christmas.  This will be fun!

So the day before the big bake session, I whip up two batches of dough for the Lebkuchens and Sue makes a big batch of Sugar Cookie dough.  We stick them in the refrigerator. The plan for bake day is to bake all of the Sugar Cookies and set them aside to cool.  Change the oven settings and bake all of the Lebkuchens.  Sometime during the Lebkuchen process we will break up in to two teams.  Team one will frost and decorate the sugar cookies and team two will finish baking the Lebs.  Finally, we will roll, mold and cut the Springerles after totally completing the baking process for the Sugar Cookies and Lebkuchens.  We can’t actually complete the baking process for the Springerles on bake day.  The nifty thing about Springerles is that they have pictures of different Bavarian symbols on each cookie.  You accomplish this by pressing a Springerle board on the dough after it is rolled out.  The reason we use the weird baker’s ammonia is to freeze the pictures in place.  This can only be accomplished if you let the unbaked cookies rest in a cool place for twenty four hours.

Well the bake day plan seems pretty simple!  I don’t see a problem banging this out in four hours.  Do you?        

Good news.  During the split Leb and Sugar session, the drinking lamp will be illuminated.  The process is sure to go more smoothly after one or two martinis or a few glasses of white wine.

What went wrong?  We completed the Sugar Cookies and Lebkuchens as planned. The Sugar Cookie prep was flawless.  The Lebkuchen prep had problems.  John, Steve and I took turns rolling and cutting these beauties.  I explained that the cookies were simple rectangles ¼ inch thick, 1 ½ inches wide and 2 ½ inches long.  In essence, a CPA, a cardiologist, and tax attorney were conceptualizing the best methods for high volume baking.  We had several rulers and a spiffy tool to measure the rolled dough thickness.  We thought that using a ravioli cutter would add a nice beveled edge to the final products.  Surprisingly, the methods we developed were not the best.  In spite of excessive measuring, there was a great deal of variance in cookie sizes.  The ravioli cutter was hard to use.  It would get completely gunked up after a few cookies. The spiffy beveled edge did not hold through the baking process.  It took a very long time crank out a full sheet of cookies.  We completed the Sugar Cookies and Lebakukens around 6:00 PM and broke for dinner without even starting the Springerles.

In addition to the baking process, an inordinate amount of time is required to buy all of the ingredients and assemble the baking tools.  We have more than seventy five cookie cutters.  Sorting them is an effort. For Christmas you probably want to exclude the alligators, grizzly bears, and Darth Vader cutters.  Sue and I spent at least forty five minutes trying to find our one and only Springerle Board.  The baker’s ammonia had to be ordered from Amazon.  

Starting the Springerles after dinner did not work well. I sensed that some of the World Class bakers were starting to lose their zeal.  Even the Carpenter’s Christmas album playing on the sound system could not retain the Christmas spirit.  Others, especially those who had lubricated themselves with a few martinis, had plenty of spirit.  They were definitely fired up to finish the project.

Because of the volume of dough, the Springerle recipe cannot be doubled.  We made two batches and each batch requires at least twenty five minutes of mixer time.  In addition, they are supposed to cool in the refrigerator for at least an hour per batch before rolling out the dough. We tried to shorten the total time by putting the dough in the freezer for fifteen minutes instead of in the refrigerator for an hour.  We finally finished getting the Springerles to the baking sheets at 10:30.  After baking the next day, the pictures on the Springerles started to fade. 

So we banged out about 450 Christmas cookies.  Our four hour estimate turned in to eight and a half.  The participants fell in to two camps.  One group, mostly comprised of minimalist drinkers, thought “Thank God it’s over.  All’s well that ends!”  The other group, who had been pounding bourbon and martinis, thought we should do another batch or two of Lebkuchens.

Most importantly, all of the cookies tasted great.  The Sugar Cookies looked perfect.  The Lebkuchens always look ugly but the flavor and texture was right on.  In essence, they looked and tasted just the way they should have.  The Springerles looked funny but the taste was terrific.  

The process may be significantly improved by judicious use of alcohol.  We should break out the martinis a little sooner and all of the participants, who are not alcoholics, should be sufficiently lubricated no later than 5:00 PM.  Egg nog with rum, a lot of white wine, or several high balls may really promote the feeling of Christmas.  After dinner, we may spontaneously find ourselves caroling throughout the neighborhood. 

The real magic of Christmas is not that God presented himself to mankind or that Santa can reach six billion households in one evening. The real magic of Christmas is that you will forget the debacle it was to bake Christmas cookies when Christmas arrives next year. After Thanksgiving, whipping up a few family cookie recipes will seem to be one of the most romantic and enjoyable activities anyone could ever perform.