Santa Claus Cookies (and Rebbe too)

Making Santa Claus cookies is a family tradition spanning three generations. Grandma (my dad's mom) is the originator. I don't know how she got started making the large, intricate cookies, but she made them every single year along with dozens of other types of cookies. My siblings and cousins all learned how to make them in Grandma's kitchen and most of us still keep the tradition alive, though they are a  lot of work. This year the entire process took me three days. 

In order to make Santa Claus cookies, you first need to have a Santa Claus cookie cutter. Without Aunt Chick's Jolly Santa Cookie cutter, you can't make these cookies. No substitution will work.  Grandma's Santa was probably from the 1950s. My oldest cousin, who is a trained chef and baker, inherited that one. I got mine in the early 2000s. Fortunately, you still can get one today.

I got my Santa as a kit with three other cookie cutters - a star, a tree, and a stocking - and a recipe booklet. I don't uses the recipe in the booklet. I use Grandma's recipe. I'm not sure if Grandma started out using the one as written and modified it so it worked for her or if she just used one of her own from the beginning. It doesn't really matter. It works and it's hers so I use it. I'm also willing to share it:

1 1/2 cups soft butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 tsp. vanilla, 2 eggs, 4 cups flour, 400, 10-12 min. 

Okay, so that's a very minimalist recipe. I've got a bunch like this in my cooking binder. I know how to make the cookies, so I don't need more details. I will, however, provide those details in case anyone would like to give these a try. 

So first, cream the butter and sugar. I use a stand mixer. Then add the vanilla and eggs. Once that's all beaten together, slowly add the flour. I then take the dough out of the mixer, split it into two lumps, wrap them in plastic wrap, and refrigerate them overnight. That's day 1 of the process.

Day 2, I remove one of the lumps of dough from the fridge to work with. With the kitchen scale I bought for myself several years ago, I weigh out 55 grams of dough for each cookie. This is not at all necessary, I just love weighing stuff on that little scale. Now the exercise in patience begins. Work the dough between your hands until it starts to warm up and soften slightly. You really just have to get the feel for it to know when it's right. Then press it into the lightly-floured cookie cutter with your thumbs.

Very slowly and carefully peel up part of the edge of the dough and try to get it to release from the mold.

Feel free to swear a this point but don't loose faith! The first one is always a mess, just like with pancakes. Just wipe down the cutter, re-flour it, and try again. Remember to keep breathing. Take your time. Calm your senses and the universe will reward you, eventually.

Repeat this process, redoing and swearing as needed, until you've filled a cookie sheet with six Santas. Then bake in a preheated oven at 400 degree Fahrenheit for 10 to 12 minutes. I let mine bake a tad too long so they were slightly brown on the edges. It's fine. Let them sit on the cookie sheet for three minutes after you remove them from the oven then transfer to a rack to cool completely.

Now, Santa Claus cookies are very clearly for Christmas. But what if you celebrate other winter holidays or no holidays at all? Well, my grandmother would send her sister's family "Old Man" cookies as they are Jehovah's Witnesses. My husband had the brilliant idea several years ago to transform Santa into a Rebbe for Hanukkah. To do this, we only filled the cookie cutter with dough up to the hat brim. Then we added an addition rectangle of dough to the top for a shtreimel. The resulting cookies weigh in at 70 grams - 50g face and beard, 20g shtreimel (in case anyone is keeping track).

The dough turned out slightly softer this year, so the cookies flattened out a bit in the oven, but overall, I was pleased. After about an hour an a half, I had 19 cookies cooling on the racks. Now, if I had had time, I could have decorated them right away. As I didn't, I wrapped them up and put them in the freezer. These cookies freeze amazingly well both undecorated and decorated.

Day three of the process came three days later. I pulled the cookies from the freezer then got things prepared for decorating. Part of what makes these cookies so special is that each one is hand decorated. What you will need for this is red and blue food coloring, shredded coconut (I whiz it in a food processor to make it into smaller shreds otherwise the beards and eyebrows look particularly wild and unkempt), and white icing. I always make my seven-minute icing, as Grandma taught me. I suppose you could cheat and use store-bought icing, but I wouldn't. 

Before I get going with the icing, I paint the Santas (and Rebbes). Santa gets red food coloring very slightly diluted with water painted on his hat with a small paintbrush and they all get a dot of red for their mouths. Then, I dilute the red with a lot more water and add a light blush to their winter-kissed cheeks and noses. I used a toothpick and undiluted blue food coloring to paint in eyes.

Then, it's time for the icing. Here's Grandma's recipe:
 

2 egg whites, 1 cup sugar, 1/8 tsp. cream of tartar, 1/4 cup water, 1 tsp vanilla

Again, minimalist, and this one definitely needs some instructions. Mix all the ingredients together in the top of a double boiler. For me, that means the Pyrex bowl that fits very well on top of my Revereware pot, which I fill 2/3 of the way with water. Let the water come up to nearly a boil then turn down the burner and put the bowl of icing ingredients on top of the pot.

Mix constantly at low speed with a hand mixer for seven minutes, making sure that you get around the edges and that you don't let the water in the pot below boil over.

Remove from the heat but leave the frosting bowl over the pot to keep it warm. If you have a pastry bag, put about 1/3 of the frosting into it. I don't have a pastry bag, so I use whatever type of plastic bag I have at the time and snip off the corner. 

I trace over the eyebrows and mustache and under the mouth with the piped frosting and fill in the hat band and pompom.

I do just a few at a time so the frosting doesn't set up before I'm done. Then I carefully lift Santa, hold him by the sides of his face, and slather his beard with frosting using a butter knife.

I then cover the entire top of the cookies with coconut. I press it down gently into the frosting before flipping the old man upside down and tapping the back of his head with a spoon to get rid of the extra coconut. And there we have it!

I've tried various things for the Rebbe's shtreimel over the years. First I tried dying coconut with black food coloring (read I had my husband try it). That was a mess. The next year, I tried crushing up chocolate cookies. That worked okay but was a bit chunky. This year, I tried sending the chocolate animal cookies through Grandma's meat grinder, thinking it would make nice consistent chunks. Well it did, but the chunks were dust-sized. So, I mixed the cookie dust with the shredded coconut. It turned out okay, but I think I'll try something new next year. I just don't know what yet. 

I left the cookies on the board in the oven overnight to dry then packaged them up. 

Whew! They do take a lot of effort but I love making them every year. And friends and family seem to enjoy getting them. I've been told they are too pretty to eat and I reply that I put so much work in them, you'd better eat them! I recommend eating them from the hat down.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!

Grandma's Cranberry Relish

I just finished making this year's batch of cranberry relish for Thanksgiving. It's one of the only dishes I always make for the holiday. The rest of the meal is whatever I feel like making that particular year. The funny thing is that when I was a kid, I didn't like cranberry relish. Every year Grandma would make a big old bowl of it for Thanksgiving dinner and I would go for the can-shaped cranberry sauce instead. My tastes have certainly evolved over time. I never liked baked macaroni and cheese (despised it, in fact) or lasagna back then either but I do now. And I love the tangy relish too, though I still have a soft spot for uber-processed jelled circular sauce.

The recipe for Grandma's Cranberry Relish is not at all a secret. It's on nearly every bag of fresh cranberries: a bag of cranberries and an orange all ground up and mixed with 1/2 cup of sugar. Her recipe is slightly different, as is mine, in that we include an apple as well. I think she liked using a Granny Smith apple. Sometimes she'd put in a lemon too. This year I had Honey Crisp apples in the fridge, so that's what I used. 

The real secret to making the most amazing cranberry relish ever is in the tools. Years before Grandma passed away, she gave me one of her old Universal meat grinders. This heavy metal tool from the early 20th century is essential for getting the perfect grind. I've never made this cranberry relish with any other tool. The bag recipe says to use a food processor, but I don't think that would work as well. 

Another tool I use in making this relish is not at all necessary but has become a decade-spanning tradition in our household. That is the wide, low stoneware bowl my husband got from his uncle. It fits beautifully under the grinder.

Once all (both) the tools are gathered, the relish takes literally minutes to make. Rinse the cranberries and sort out any bad ones, then thoroughly wash the orange and the apple. Core and slice the apple and cut the orange into wedges. Note: do not peel the orange! Then send everything through the grinder. I like to alternate the cranberries and fruit slices, but that's not necessary. Take your time and listen to the sounds of the cranberries popping, the apples crushing, and the oranges squeaking through the screw drive of the grinder. 

All too soon, you will have a full, beautiful bowl of perfectly ground fruits. This year, the orange was a particularly juicy one, so I drained off a lot of liquid. Then I added just under a half cup of white sugar. I tasted it and added a little more. And that's it! Grandma's Cranberry Relish!

I spooned the relish into two containers and put them directly into the freezer since Thanksgiving is still two weeks away. Grandma would often make gallons of the stuff when the cranberries were on sale for the holiday and fill a dozen frosting containers that she had saved throughout the years. That way, anytime she roasted a chicken or other large chunk of meat, she could pull some relish out of the freezer and make it a festive meal. I don't make a lot of cranberry relish at a time. I really like the seasonality of it. We only use one container for Thanksgiving, however, so the second container is a nice addition to a meal later on.

I really miss my Grandma but I feel her with me every time I make her cranberry relish.

Oh Deer!

We've known from the time we moved into this house, more than ten years ago now, that there's a thriving population of deer in the neighborhood. That's why we built a fence around the garden as soon as we finished filling the new beds with soil. For years, the narrow strips of lattice supplemented with taller plastic mesh was enough to keep the deer out of the garden. (It didn't, however keep out the rabbits as reported in posts from 2015, 2020, and last year.) That changed last year when I noticed hoof prints in the beds for the first time. 

Some prints and nibbles on August 3, 2023

At that time, we didn't do anything significant about the intrusion. It seemed to be a one-time thing and didn't effect our harvest for the season. Then, one year later, I noticed again, that one of our four-hoofed acquaintances had found its way into our garden.

Another incursion August 21, 2024

I had assumed that, like the year before, the deer had found its way into the garden by accident. With the fence, the plants, and the wooden paths, I felt like it hadn't intentionally leapt into the visual noise. But, since it was there, it went ahead and sampled what the garden had to offer. There was evidence of nibbling on most of the plants including the cucumbers and tomatoes. The beast mainly enjoyed the leaves on the bean plants, but not the beans themselves, and the Swiss chard. There wasn't a huge amount of damage so, again, I didn't worry about it too much.

When more and more prints appeared in the beds over the next weeks, we decided to take action. Our entire backyard has a slight slope to the south. We built the garden where an above ground pool had been so the north side of the fence is closer to the ground than the south side. I deduced, therefore, that it was the north side over which the deer had been jumping. Furthermore, we have very tall, very bushy asparagus at the east end of the garden along the fence, so the deer must be coming over the western portion. That's where my husband built increased fortification. 

Notice the extra tall white fencing at the left.

For a few weeks, it seemed as though the deer had been thwarted. Then, in early October, more hoof prints appeared. This time, the creature ate nearly all our remaining chard. I found that particularly annoying as leaf miners had gotten into the chard earlier in the season and I had basically given up on it for the season when, at the end of September, the plants started sending up fresh, new leaves. I had hoped for a late harvest but that didn't happen.

One evening, I was in our kitchen making dinner when I happened to look out the window toward our garden. I saw a brown blob inside the fence and knew it was a deer. I grabbed my good camera and quietly rushed outside. I managed to get one picture of the offender - as seen at the top of this post - and a brief video of it fleeing the scene.

I also got a couple pictures of the rogue deer rejoining the rest of the herd in our backyard.

I don't like the example this sets with the little ones.

Several years ago, my husband gave me a game camera for Christmas. I've seen many wonderful animals that I wouldn't have even known were passing through if not for the camera. (check out this compilation I made: "Everyone love the hole under our neighbor's shed") The camera had been facing our middle yard but I moved it into the garden with the hopes of catching a future deer visit. 

When I pulled the memory card a few days later, there were hundreds of images on it. This isn't at all unusual. It actually was fewer images than was typical since there were fewer things moving within the confines of the garden to trigger the camera. We had already cleaned up most of the beds since nearly everything had been harvested at that point. Most of the images were of the remaining plants waving randomly and of squirrels - other frequent visitors to the garden.

Two squirrels at once.

My eyes sort of glazed over as I quickly clicked through the images until a sudden change caught my attention.

!!!

There it was: the trespassing deer staring straight at the camera, eyes all aglow from the infrared flash. And it wasn't just a quick in and out. I have 132 images of the deer wandering through the garden.

At this point, we're not going to enact any new anti-deer measures. We've finally had a frost  - though it wasn't a true killing one - and we've gotten what we want out of the garden. In the spring, when we finish the switchover to new beds, we'll remake the fence as well in the hope that next season the garden will go unmolested. In the meantime, I hope to enjoy more pictures of our backyard wildlife doing their wild things.
 

Strawberry Popcorn

We grew strawberry popcorn this year. It was the corn in our Three Sisters bed. This area is good for corn, but, as a home garden, I wasn't expecting to get much from our little 4-foot by 11-foot bed. I was actually delightfully surprised!

We planted the shiny little red kernels on May 25 with the rest of the garden.

And then we waited. A week later, we had rows of perfect blade-like seedlings.

Two weeks later, the whole bed was really starting to look like something. 

One more week and everything had more than doubled in size.

July came...

...and we just kept waiting. There really wasn't anything else to do. By then, the weeds had slowed considerably so daily maintenance wasn't necessary. When there was heavy rain and/or high winds, we sort of pushed the flattened corn stalks up again, but they more-or-less straightened themselves on their own.

By mid August there was definite progress in ear-development.

Some of the ears seemed odd to me (three in one spot?), but what do I know? This was my first time growing popcorn. A green stink bug seemed okay with it.

As did the bees.

And so there was more waiting as the stalk and ears began to dry.

By early October, I was tired of waiting. Though my patience has greatly improved as I've gotten older, I hit my limit. The majority of the ears were nice and dry so I went for it.

I am now putting shucking popcorn right up there with - well just slightly lower than - shelling beans. It was a beautiful day as I sat on our concrete patio, pulling back the dried husks, and revealing shiny, gorgeous, tiny, red ears of popcorn.

And after shucking ear after ear, I had a lovely surprise: an entirely white ear!

I got 21 shiny ears of strawberry popcorn in all (just the one white one). I strung them up with twine and hung them on our porch so they could dry further. 

I read that it would take about two weeks to fully dry. Of course, that varies by location and weather conditions. So, eight days after hanging the ears, I pulled one down to give it a try.

It was a bit of a struggle to pull the kernels off the cob, so I only did half of the tiny ear.

I put the loose kernels into a paper bag and microwaved them for about two minutes. I could hear tiny explosion but was disappointed by what I found when I opened the bag. The kernels had split open but that was it. My impatience was not rewarded.

So the half-ear of popcorn sat on our kitchen counter next to the last of the season's tomatoes until last night when I decided to try again. This time the kernels practically fell off the cob and made wonderful popping sounds in the microwave. And, lo and behold, we had popcorn!

I plan to leave the other 20 ears hanging on the porch for the next couple of days since we are experiencing 80 degree weather (yuck! The time of summer has past; it's fall now!). If the kernels come off easily, I know they're ready. If not, we'll hang them inside as temperatures will be falling back into the 50s by the end of the week (yay!).

In case anyone is wondering, the corn stalks became fall decor along with some pumpkins and a giant mum I got at my favorite pumpkin-and-mum-buying spot.

The popcorn harvest was just the start of putting the garden to bed for the winter. It's always a bit sad to see the end of fresh veggies, but I'm ready to be done for now. Some locals are not as pleased by the end of our growing season. But that's a story for next time....

Oh Deer!