Tradition

Ah, fellow college freshman, we’re home for the first extended period of time.  It’s a bit weird, amirite??  Even though I came home to find the furniture the same as always and my boxes of tea in the pantry right where I left them, it’s clear that something (actually, many little things) has definitely changed. 

But it’s the holidays, and the holidays are full of traditions, and nothing will make you feel at home and at ease quite like tradition. 

Every year, my mom, brother and I make Christmas cookies and invite our closest friends over to decorate them with us.

The recipes we use have been in our family forever.  They’re written on index cards, now a little yellow and with splashes of vanilla extract and smudges of butter on the edges. 

We make molasses and sour cream cookies. 

The molasses cookies are spiced and flavorful, and the sour cream ones are soft and pillowy.  Neither type is very sweet on its own.

That’s why we can decorate them with buttercream icing and lotsa sprinkles!

It’s a match made in heaven, really. 

The icing is simple: just butter, powdered sugar, and a splash of milk creamed together.  The secret ingredient is a dash of extract…  we usually do lemon or orange.  The citrus notes are very nice, especially with the spiced molasses cookies. 

We save some plain white icing for spreading, but divvy up the rest and mix in dabs of color.  We add that to piping bags and are ready to decorate. 

I’m not going to say we resist the urge to just ice and eat a few cookies on the spot, but we DO take our time to carefully decorate most of the cookies.  That’s the fun of it! 

And at the end of the day, we send our friends back home with tins full of their works of art, and tummies full of sugar. 

Now that’s a sweet tradition.