After 40 years, another try at home economics
Back in the mid-’70s, the powers that be at my junior high school had the radically progressive idea to let the girls to try industrial arts and the boys take a crack at home economics.
I’d like to report that I emerged as an expert cookie baker, but all I have are vague recollections of smoke and charred remains.
Hey, I was barely into my teens then. A grown man can do much better. Right?
To find out, I enlisted the help of not just one, but two teachers: my mother-in-law, Mary Alice Norcik, who graciously lent us the use of her kitchen for the exercise, and her friend Cathy Zreliak of Upper St. Clair, who supplied the recipe, the self-explanatory “Grandma’s Christmas Cookies.”
OK, here we go.
The recipe seems to be simple enough, but what does this mean: “Cream together?” Wasn’t that a reunion of those “Sunshine of Your Love” guys?
Already, the ladies are laughing. Possibly with me, not at me.
It turns out that “creaming together” is the somewhat tricky – I’m going to use that word a lot – process of mixing together sugar and margarine to an acceptably light-and-fluffy consistency.
Fortunately, Mary Alice owns the Cadillac of electric mixers, a far cry from the handheld variations we cranked our way through in eighth grade. So adding flour to the concoction is no problem, as long as the mixer isn’t running too fast and nothing flies out of the bowl.
Oops. Sorry about that.
Eventually, I emerge with a big ball of dough that needs to chill for a while before being subjected to a rolling pin, which to this point I know best as something that Wilma likes to use on Fred Flintstone’s head.
Rolling, as it turns out, can be tricky, too. As you flatten the dough, you don’t want it to turn out too thick or too thin. The oven knows when it’s just right.
Now it’s time for Cathy’s cookie cutters, vintage models that her grandmother was using around the time Elvis started singing “Blue Christmas.” The cutters shaped like a tree and Santa Claus are particularly interesting, as they serve as molds to contour the dough on the tops of the cookies.
“I don’t know anyone who does this nowadays,” Cathy tells me, and I believe her. Hardly anyone I know ventures beyond buying tubes of Pillsbury products.
Getting the trees and Clauses out of their cutters can be a bit, well, tricky. Using a spatula helps, even if you’re like me and call it a pancake turner.
The ladies are laughing again.
As for the actual baking of the festively shaped cookies, let’s just say that I haven’t used our new oven at home since the kitchen was renovated a couple of years ago. Why wait for something to bake when you have a grill?
Anyway, after I master the concepts of “preheat” and “set timer,” I have a pan full of freshly baked cookies, ready for the final step: Christmas decorations.
And here’s where it really gets – all together now! – tricky.
Decorating the star-shaped cookies isn’t too bad. Just spread on some icing and dip them in a bowl of rainbow jimmies. Well, that’s if the icing will adhere to the cookie’s surface evenly, or if it doesn’t slop over to the back. Even so, they turn out to be presentable.
But then, here comes Santa Claus.
To decorate the visage of Jolly Ol’ St. Nick, Cathy pulls out pastry bags full of various colors of icing to help apply some special flourishes: coconut flakes for the beard, Red Hots candy for various facial features, more coconut for the eyebrows, red icing for Santa’s hat and white icing for his beard.
Yeah, try getting all of that to stick where it’s supposed to go, in any semblance of order.
Same goes for the Christmas tree. Decorating it should be as simple as applying green icing around the perimeter, then different-colored dots for ornaments.
But the finished product certainly could have used a touch that’s much more magic than mine.
In the words of Bo Diddley, though, you can’t judge a book by its cover. And even my not-so-magic hands couldn’t ruin the taste of Grandma’s Christmas Cookies.
Thanks, Cathy’s grandmother!
And thanks, Cathy and Mary Alice! I’ve finally learned home ec.