November 2. Terrible literary novel,* assigned by book group, is due November 3. While trudging through its turgid treacle, realize Xmas is 52 days away. Check USPS to see when cookies must be mailed. Calculate days to cookie mailing. No more than 49 assuming USPS is being truthful and not bragging. Exit novel** on Kindle, bring up Los Angeles Times Holiday Cookies instead. Take long hot bath and reread all recipes, careful not to drop Kindle in the water.
November 3. Suppress all literary guilt and skip to dumb ending of novel*** in time for book group.
November 4. Read through all recipes in cookie folder, and notes from last Xmas season. Regretfully send Epicurious Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies back to minor leagues (delicious but cookie part is too fat and filling oozes out. Not a good packer). Promote Keeflees from LA Times to this year's lineup, even though they look complicated. Resolve to find good spice cookie recipe this year.
November 27, Thanksgiving. List all cookie recipients and divide into in person and by mail groups. As always, include family member who is horrified that I am atheist; getting Christmas cookies from me really confuses her. December 7. Think briefly about Pearl Harbor. Then off to Trader Joe's and supermarket for baker's sugar, more brown sugar, unsalted butter, instant espresso, lemon extract, molasses. Request and receive from Mr. Emmet early Xmas present of immense mixer to replace tiny mixer bought at yard sale 25 years ago that rattles agedly as it tries to whip cream which is all it can do.
December 8. Clear battle bridge, a/k/a kitchen island built by my brother-in-law and called The Bismarck because you want to be under it in case of earthquake.
Mix up one batch ofAmanda's Amazing Sugar Cookies and Martha Stewart's Gingerbread Cookies. Freeze the former (I know what they taste like and they ARE amazing); bake the latter. Pretty darn good, but Elizabeth thinks they need allspice and Mr. Emmet deprecates what he considers a surfeit of cloves.
December 9 and 10. Mix up and freeze more sugar cookie dough, also Lemony Moon And Stars dough.
December 10. Mr. Emmet loses fight with window he was painting. Tip of his finger is smashed. Beyond gory. To the ER, where even X-ray makes me queasy. Hospitalized for two days. Surgery results in splint up to his elbow and lots of meds. Who knew there were so many organs in the tip of a finger, and wouldn't The Distal Phalanx be a great name for a thriller?
December 12. Mr. Emmet is finally sprung from the hospital, which seems reluctant to part with him (inattentive attending doc loses chart with surgeon's scrip in it, also forgets to write discharge order and then disappears himself. I track down director of nursing and hosp. administrator who couldn't be nicer about locating him). Within half hour of return home, I develop pneumonia, or maybe it's just a terrible terrible cold.
December 13 through December 17. Many many trips to the store as I make up Keeflee dough, Martha's Gingerbread Cookie dough, King Arthur Flour Molasses Cookies with rum (Joe Froggers) and Molasses/Ginger Cookies (both amazing), also four batches of Martha Stewart's Chocolate Espresso Snowcaps. Bake a batch of my mother's brownies (see below) but with gluten free flour for loyal assistant Malki, using King Arthur gluten-free flour. Results more than acceptable. Eat half the brownies myself.
December 20. Plan to bake off Brownies and Toasted Oatmeal Cookies) in leisurely fashion. Realize that more will be required. Bake off spice cookies too. Discover hundreds of balls of frozen chocolate espresson snowcap cookie dough in freezer. Apparently made them up during the finger crisis while in altered state.
My Mother's Brownies (from her mother's The American Woman's Cookbook, 1916 edition). Recipe online here. These aren't square cupcakes, like modern brownies, and they aren't solidified frosting like fudge. They're indescribably delicious!
4 oz. baker's unsweetened chocolate
1 stick butter
2 cups sugar (I use brown)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup flour
1 cup walnuts if you like I also add 1/2 tsp. cinnamon and 1/2 tsp instant coffee, or you can put in a little peppermint extract instead
Cream butter and sugar, add melted chocolate. Beat in eggs. Add salt and flour. Mix in walnuts. Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. They'll look half-baked when you take them out. Mark them into squares while they're still hot and they'll harden as they cool. Sadly, this batch turns out much less awesome than usual. Can't put my finger on how it happened, but suspect I doubled some recipe ingredients while quadrupling others.
December 21. D Day minus one. Bake from 8:00 AM till 5:00 PM. Partial results below:
Then it's time for my sister-in-law's annual Girls Night which normally requires delivery of five bags of cookies to hostess and fellow guests. This year, storm of emails throughout day as number of guests swells to eleven, then drops to six or maybe seven, but it could be nine. Overstimulation of planning circuitry causes temporary loss of power of speech, restored at party through application of chardonnay.
December 22. Pack millions of cookies into twelve tins. Needed WAY more Dutch girl cookies due to lack of inventory control and Mr. Emmet's depredations. Damn, damn, damn email which creates illusion of closeness but without physical addresses. Desperate search uncovers rolodex wedged between desk and bookshelf. Scrawl names and address onto If It Fits It Ships mailers (free!). Post office miraculously not too crowded (because everyone else had sense to mail their stuff last week). Nice post office lady says she'll need to open and test one shipment because Quality Control. Laugh anxiously. Humor sensors off line.
December 23 and 24 . Cook Christmas Eve dinner for 15. Include keeflees which I didn't finish in time for mailing. They really are good, but Czech grandmother who originated recipe had peculiar sense of humor and threw in a lot of little tricks to mess with subsequent bakers, imo.
December 25. Sleep.
December 26. Sleep.
December 27. Sleep.
December 28. Unknown at this time, but probably Sleep.
* The Elegance of The Hedgehog
** The Elegance of The Hedgehog
*** The Elegance of The Hedgehog