Last weekend Zack had some suggestions for a new Christmas cookie: sugar cookies with candy canes crushed up and mixed into them. I thought that sounded like a great idea so I pulled out my handy dandy Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook (the one with the red checkered cover; the only non-Emeril cookbook I ever use) and looked up a recipe for sugar cookies.
I don’t bake sugar cookies at any time of the year but Christmas. I mean, come on; they’re cookies made with sugar. It’s like making a bread sandwich. Or a bee garden.
This is not to say I haven’t had some fabulous sugar cookies in my time. I used to nanny for a family when I was in high school and Mrs. T. always had a bag full of the most delicious sugar cookies in the freezer. I know I had that recipe for a while but it’s been gone for decades.
Anyway, I can’t have all my Christmas cookies feature chocolate (wait…can I?) No, that’s boring. Besides, there are a few people in the world (and by ‘world’ I mean ‘my family’) who don’t care all that much for chocolate. Turns out that .5% of DNA actually makes a yuuuuge difference. So, the Christmas cookie arsenal includes pecan sandies, which are great but I haven’t actually made them in years. They’re a very high maintenance cookie. You have to roll them in powdered sugar twice. What the heck, one rolling isn’t good enough for you? They’re like taking a hard cover book to the beach: just not worth it. Then there are the lemon meltaways: I love them and they’re easy. Very different from all the other cookies, too. I never make too many of them because they’re an acquired taste. A very adult cookie. I imagine they’d be served if one were having tea with the Queen.
Ginger snaps are a favorite of mine. They’re very popular with the greater Pivec clan even though my kids don’t much care for them. They always eat them when I make them. I love them: they’re crispy and chewy and delicious and the spices in them are all good for you. I looked it up! Those cookies are practically medicinal. In a pinch I could make giant snickerdoodles. Snickerdoodles were a big favorite among my friends growing up. They’re good but…I usually save them for lent, when I give up chocolate but my sweet tooth won’t leave me alone. Snickerdoodles are great right out of the oven but when they cool down…well, they’re a good cookie when you can’t eat real cookies.
By ‘real cookies’ I mean ‘chocolate chip cookies’, of course. The default, failsafe, staple, height of perfection cookie.
Zack wants me to make chocolate chip cookies for Christmas. He said that while he enjoys all the exotic cookies that I don’t make all year, that’s no reason to deprive him of the best cookies of all time for a whole month.
Our Zack lives a charmed life, doesn’t he?
I bought a package of candy canes and mixed up the sugar cookies. I crushed the canes, dumped them into the dough and refrigerated it as instructed. The problem was that the candy canes completely melted while the cookies baked. This created the sticky problem of cookies that I couldn’t pry off the sheets when they came out of the oven. It was a real mess. They smelled fantastic but they looked burnt around the bottom from the melted sugar. Ty and Babalouie were here when I baked them. Ty and I agreed that they weren’t very good; despite the wonderful peppermint smell, we couldn’t taste the candy in the cookies. I had been hoping for some candy crunch in the cookies too but the crushed candes melted away to nothing but the sticky residue all over my cookie sheets. I declared the cookies a failed experiment and was happy that I only made a small batch.
Babalouie ate six of them.
Then something unexpected happened: in the morning, when they had cooled down completely I tried one with my coffee.
It was perfect.
A delicious, soft sugar cookie, infused with peppermint flavoring and a satisfying chewiness provided by the melted candy.
They didn’t look very good but they made my mouth do handsprings!
So, I bought a couple of tubes of sugar cookie mix and more candy canes and some parchment paper to combat the problems with the prototype batch and I’m taking another stab at them. As soon as I’m done eating the peanut butter kiss cookies I made first.
Mmmmm…peanut butter kiss cookies.