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!

Where's Winter?

It has been a very odd winter. It snowed a bit then it got warm then it rained then it got warmer (68 degrees on Christmas Eve day!) then it snowed a little again then it got cold (about 7 degrees, so not really cold) and now it’s warm and raining again. The other day I actually saw a forsythia bush blossoming! Sheesh. I wish the weather would make up its mind.

A little frosty

Just a bit of snow

The snow blower anxiously awaiting snow

Our house has a nice little fireplace. Unfortunately it has been rare to have a day cold enough this season to warrant a fire. There were a couple of cold evenings, though, when we could have a fire. There’s nothing like sitting in front of a glowing fireplace, watching the dancing flames, soaking up the heat. We’ve found a combination of pressed wood “logs” and actual wood make a nice balance of heat and flames.

So many pretty colors: oranges...

...purple and yellow...

...pinks and reds.

This fall my husband took down a couple of trees in the back yard to use for firewood. While it’s far too green to burn this year, it should be very nice for next winter. I grew up with a variety of wood-fueled heat sources. By the time the first snow fell, the cellar was filled with firewood. Row upon row would be stacked from floor to ceiling. I never cared for the creepy-crawlies that would come out of the wood, though the tiny pocket snake was rather cute. Still, I’m glad our home-cut firewood is stacked out in the garage.

The pile waiting for next year

Some nice cherry and locust wood

We finally put the bird feeder out for the season. Normally, we wait until there is snow on the ground but who knows when that’s going to be. The chickadees found the feeder within minutes. I love chickadees! Soon after that, a titmouse showed up. Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal now frequent the feeder along with a tiny wren. A small flock of finches stops by on occasion as well. I love watching the birds and it’s much easier to get photos of them when they come to you. Of course the bird seeds have also attracted Tubby McSquirrel and his friends but if I want to feed the birds, I have to host the squirrels as well.

A chickadee being tall

A titmouse and chickadee sharing the feeder

Squirrel!

It just doesn’t feel like winter without the snow. Sure, the wind is cold and the trees are bare but the grass is still oddly green. I enjoy the snow. That’s why I still live in New York State. I get tired of it after a while but it just doesn’t feel like winter without a white blanket over everything. The snow will come. I’m sure of that. Until then, I’ll just have to look back at pictures from winters when we lived on the mountain.

Looking back at winter in 2009 in the Adirondacks

It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like…Springtime?

So, it’s the 15^th of December and honeybees are still working over the flowers on the lettuce in the garden. The temperature was at a record high yesterday. I was actually able to pick some fresh herbs from the garden for dinner last night. This doesn’t feel right to me. This is New York State. It doesn’t even feel like just an extended autumn. The warmth and the rain and the smell of the air all remind me of springtime. Strange. At least I got to enjoy the bees, though they seemed rather frantic.

Usually by this time of year nearly all insect life outside is dead or asleep. I’m not used to seeing so many tiny creatures still active.

Putting the Garden to Bed

It’s been a strange autumn. We had a frost in early October then a snow storm and then 70 degree weather again. Then the weekends were rainy. So, it took me quite some time to actually put the garden in order for the winter.

The first hard frost was enough to kill nearly everything in the garden but it was a couple weeks before I could get in to clean up everything. It is always a bit sad to see everything suddenly brown when just a day earlier it was all brilliant and green. But it’s also nice to know that the growing season is done and it time for the next step.

I like to pull out all the dead plants in the fall. Some people let them stand and then till them into the soil in the spring. I like the look of a cleaned up garden bed so I pull everything out. Some of the dead plants I put into the compost bin. Some I leave on the beds. I don’t really have a scientific process for this. It just depends on what I feel like that day. For example, the eggplants, though they barely produced any fruit, set out deep roots. When I pulled the plants, a lot of soil came with them. So, I decided to leave the plants lying in the garden bed so I can shake some more soil off of them in the spring. The tomatoes, I removed to the brush heap in the back. Toward the end of the season the leaves got brown and spotty so I don’t want the plants lying on the soil. Similarly, when the fungus hit my chard and beets mid-season, I put the infected leaves out back. The lettuce, when I finally pull it will go into the compost bin.

Even as I type this, just days before Thanksgiving, the lettuce is still going strong. I was going to tear it out two weekends ago when I took care of the rest of the plants but a honey bee was working over the tiny lettuce flowers. The weather was so hot after I planted the second round of seeds that the lettuce came up bitter. But the plants looked nice so I just let them grow. Now I am pleased that there was something there for the little pollinators to work on later into the season.

Lettuce flowers

The strawberries got their straw and the asparagus got a good thick layer of maple leaves. Conveniently, there are a couple of maple trees near the garden so I just had to rake some leaves over and toss them over the garden fence. And even though it has been quite windy at time since I put the leaves down, the combination of the raised bed and the fact that it has fencing along two sides has kept the leaves in place.

Shh, the asparagus is sleeping.

So, for the most part, the garden is ready for its long winter’s nap.

And here are a few autumnal photos from around the yard.

Happy Winter Solstice!

I always look forward to the winter solstice because I know that from this point on, the days will be getting longer again.  It also marks the point at which I let myself start thinking about next year’s garden.  Everything is going to be new for me next summer with the new property and new garden that, as of now, is still unfinished.  I have several packets of seeds left from last year but I know I’ll want to add some other favorites.  I also want to try some new vegetables that fit into my Shaker plan.  There’s going to be a lot of planning to do.

I’m glad I will have a lot to do, at least on paper, before spring.  Winter is such a tough time for someone who loves having her hands in the soil.  Here, it’s even a bit more difficult that I’m used to.  In the Adirondacks, the snow falls, any time after Halloween, really, and then it stays until spring.  It is very clearly winter and there is nothing that can be done outside because the garden is underneath a frozen blanket.  Here, in the Southern Tier, snow only lasts a day or two.  The largest storm we have had so far left about four inches of snow on the ground.  That was gone in two days. 

Winter! (for a little while at least)

So, I look outside at the bare yard and incomplete garden and think that I should be out there doing something – building raised beds or moving gravel for the paths or something.  Then I go outside into 30 degree weather and feel the frozen ground crunch under my feet and remember that there is nothing to do out there.  I just have to wait until spring arrives.  Nothing teaches patience like a garden.

There are things to do during the long winter, though.  I do a lot of knitting and writing.  That keeps me out of trouble.  Then there is the planning, of course.  I’m a big fan of lists and graphs and diagrams so it is the perfect season to indulge.  There is also the fun of finding creative ways to use the produce put up for the season.  We don’t have much from this past summer since I only had the small surrogate beds at work.  Still, my husband made his annual crock of sauerkraut this fall.  The crock we use was one that my grandmother, and probably her mother before her, used to make sauerkraut.  I like having that connection to the past both in the crock itself and in the process of fermenting cabbage in my own home.  There’s something comfortable in the older ways of preparing food and making things for our home.  I really enjoy modern technology but I think I will always be drawn back to doing things by hand.

This year's sauerkraut was ready for Thanksgiving