high-bar baking

This is it. This is the recipe. This is childhood on a 3×5, this is every memory in the kitchen with my mother, this is themed holidays and coloured sprinkles and being too small to have any coordination in my hands. This is my great-aunt Geri’s sugar cookie recipe. 

If you’re in the group of people who’ll go to the ends of the earth to keep your sugar cookies from spreading, close the window now. This is not for you. They have spread edges, and they look just fine to me. They always have. 

When I left home, my mother gave me dozens of her cookie cutters; it hardly made a dent in her collection. (I only got the ugly or duplicate Halloween ones, of course). I bought a jar from IKEA that was too small for them all, and had to find another. Now they sit above my fridge, colours showing through the glass, bound together by holiday category with pipe cleaners. Heaven forbid I ever acquire another category, because I don’t own any more pipe cleaners. The mini letter cutters are scattered throughout the jar, though, those aren’t grouped. I pull those down at the beginning of every football season to make the letters for “GO IRISH BEAT [insert names of every team we play that season]”. I’ve mostly fallen out of that tradition, but for a few years there I was religious about sending out a picture of that week’s cookies. Maybe I’ll get back into it. 

Looking back, this is the recipe that I think I can blame for my love of salty desserts. Half a teaspoon of vanilla makes sense for the original author and time period; vanilla is expensive and not to be used profligately. But look at that ratio — half a teaspoon of vanilla to a full teaspoon of salt. That’s what I thought was normal, back then, and I still do. Claire’s apologized in a recipe for a teaspoon of salt, justifying to her audience that we really do need it. It never once struck me as odd; that’s just how it’s done. That’s the amount of salt you need, I need, we all need, and I’m not going to back down. These cookies are perfect, though, in the way that pro chefs aim for. They use as much salt as humanly possible without tasting salty. They just taste good. More like themselves. 

The recipe card makes me laugh at its concise, matter-of-fact manner. No wasted words on what order you’re supposed to mix ingredients in. No time or space to spell out refrigerator. No need to correct the misspelling of “white.” We all know what she meant. 

The frosting recipe is pure Midwest: one stick of butter, half a bag (is it a one pound bag? Do I have any idea what size bag Mom bought when I was a child? Nope.) of powdered sugar, a splash of vanilla (a teaspoon, perhaps, when I was small and needed rules), maybe a pinch of salt. Milk if it needed thinning, more sugar if it needed thickening. Then food colouring to match the holiday. Except Christmas red. That way madness lies. 

An offset spatula really makes the difference when it comes to frosting these, although I didn’t believe it until I had one. We grew up using butterknives, but it’s such a revelation to be able to get your hand out of your own way. Sprinkles go on as soon as one cookie is frosted. If you wait until you’ve done a few rows, the frosting will have set and the sprinkles won’t stick. This is a great task for children, I can confirm having done it. And a great task for adults, I can confirm having drafted adults into assisting me last Christmas. 

They don’t have to look perfect, and they don’t even have to look good. You think they looked good when I was frosting these bad boys at age nine? As if.