excellent cookies…

My grandmother used to make cookies at Christmas.  I have her old recipe box and it is green metal.  It always surprises me to see the things that she did then — in her own marriage.  You can tell by the recipes.  She used to make something that my mother loved called a chocolate roll.  It’s a little like a Buche de Noel (excuse the punctuation) except hers was an American version.

I have that recipe box in front of me right now.  It’s like an object from a bygone age in a way.

You need a cookie press for these.  She used the ribbon disc, and then she sprinkled them with red and green sugar — or dragees, or sometimes multi-colored nonpareils.

Swedish Cookies

1/2 pound butter

I cup granulated sugar

2 egg yolks

2 cups sifted flour

pinch of salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon almond extract

Pack into the press and form the ribbons on a cookie sheet leaving about half an inch in between them (they expand) — bake at 375 degrees for ten minutes and do not overbake — edges should be pale gold.

As I look at that recipe box I see myself in childhood — my handwriting!  And my mother — although she never had a recipe box — but her childhood is in here too.  Her handwriting.

I wonder what it would be like to fix the things I see in here.  All I remember are the cookies, and Christmas.

Try them?  If you feel like baking.

That book I wrote is really good and so one little rejection means nothing to me.  Nope.

One thing my grandmother was always reading was “Gift from the Sea.”

It was a book that meant a lot to her.  Timeless.