Name:
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
I had a request on my other blog for our sugar cookie recipe, so here it is. Believe me, if you can manage to wait, these really are better the day after they're made!
Granny's Sugar Cookies
3/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Cream butter, sugar, and eggs. Add vanilla. Mix in dry ingredients.
Chill for one hour.
Roll out approx 3/8 in thick and cut into desired shapes. Place on ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 400 for 6-8 min. Do not brown. If they're browning, reduce oven to 375 and add a couple of minutes. Cool thoroughly on rack.
Frosting:
1 lb. confectioners sugar
1/4 c. butter,softened
pinch salt
enough milk to make a nice consistency
food coloring (Wilton's is best)
Cream butter, sugar, and salt together. Slowly add enough milk to make a frosting that is easy to spread. Using a mixer will give a fluffier consistency.
Divide into small portions and add food coloring. Spread on cooled cookies and add sprinkles, red hots, raisins, etc. If you don't end up with a lot of sprinkles on the floor you haven't used enough.
Best eaten the next day, if you can wait!
Granny's Sugar Cookies
3/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Cream butter, sugar, and eggs. Add vanilla. Mix in dry ingredients.
Chill for one hour.
Roll out approx 3/8 in thick and cut into desired shapes. Place on ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 400 for 6-8 min. Do not brown. If they're browning, reduce oven to 375 and add a couple of minutes. Cool thoroughly on rack.
Frosting:
1 lb. confectioners sugar
1/4 c. butter,softened
pinch salt
enough milk to make a nice consistency
food coloring (Wilton's is best)
Cream butter, sugar, and salt together. Slowly add enough milk to make a frosting that is easy to spread. Using a mixer will give a fluffier consistency.
Divide into small portions and add food coloring. Spread on cooled cookies and add sprinkles, red hots, raisins, etc. If you don't end up with a lot of sprinkles on the floor you haven't used enough.
Best eaten the next day, if you can wait!
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Granny and Molly at a special goodbye breakfast this morning at La Madeleine. We sat by the fire and enjoyed the scrumptious food and talked about tomorrow's move. Molly says she is "a little bit okay" about it :-)
Monday, December 19, 2005
It's Cookie Day! Granny and Papa, all nine of our children, one son-in-law, and all eleven of our grandchildren piled in the kitchen for our traditional day of decorating Granny's Sugar Cookies. I mixed up the dough on Saturday, CJ and Bethany got up early this morning and rolled and baked for several hours, I mixed up six pounds of confectioner's sugar with butter and food coloring, and EVERYONE joined in the decoration (with some spending as much time licking fingers as spreading!). Yep, white flour, white sugar, a healthy share of chemicals, and a huge dose of fun and laughter...
(More musings about Cookie Day here. )
Saturday, December 10, 2005
For the record: this was granddaughter Molly's "funnest day ever." Never mind that she'll say that again Tuesday and next Friday and Christmas Eve and again Christmas Day. For now, THIS was the funnest day.
So what was so much fun? For a seven-year-old princess, a half-day of shopping and lunch out with Granny is right up there with a trip to the beach or a sleepover or the day we got the trampoline. I know this because, as we sat across from each other at Chili's today, my mind wandered back to another restaurant in another city in another century, in what seems now like another world. I was only five, and my funnest day ever was a trip to the elegant Marston Department Store in San Diego. My Grandma got me all dressed up in my best party clothes and drove me downtown for a morning of shopping, capped off by lunch in Marston's tea room. And the MOST FUNNEST thing was that Marston's put on a lovely fashion show during lunch, with live models that walked in between the tables and displayed the finest Chanel suits and evening wear from Givenchy and Yves St. Laurent. (In my barely five-year-old concept of appropriateness, I exclaimed to one of the models, "My, you ladies DO wear clothes!" Grandma reminded me of this until the day she died.) It was a fantasy for a little girl, and wonderful training for all those formal affairs to which we were treated in the mid-20th century. China teacups, starched napkins, tiny finger sandwiches and delicate petits-fours became the ornaments of my memory book, ones I treasure nearly fifty years later. My grandmother gave me the gift of feeling like royalty.
Well, we do things very differently in 2005, but there are still opportunities for giving the same gifts. My physical condition has not allowed me to recreate some of the experiences for my grandchildren that I would have liked, but I hope that as Molly leaves my home and moves to a place and a life where I am not a constant presence, she'll remember the tea party we had in my bed during my convalescence. . .the three Christmas Cookie Days she's shared while living at Granny's House. . .the candles and the spicy smells and the welcomes. . .and the funnest day ever at Kohl's and Target and Chili's.
I'll miss you, my dear Molly.
So what was so much fun? For a seven-year-old princess, a half-day of shopping and lunch out with Granny is right up there with a trip to the beach or a sleepover or the day we got the trampoline. I know this because, as we sat across from each other at Chili's today, my mind wandered back to another restaurant in another city in another century, in what seems now like another world. I was only five, and my funnest day ever was a trip to the elegant Marston Department Store in San Diego. My Grandma got me all dressed up in my best party clothes and drove me downtown for a morning of shopping, capped off by lunch in Marston's tea room. And the MOST FUNNEST thing was that Marston's put on a lovely fashion show during lunch, with live models that walked in between the tables and displayed the finest Chanel suits and evening wear from Givenchy and Yves St. Laurent. (In my barely five-year-old concept of appropriateness, I exclaimed to one of the models, "My, you ladies DO wear clothes!" Grandma reminded me of this until the day she died.) It was a fantasy for a little girl, and wonderful training for all those formal affairs to which we were treated in the mid-20th century. China teacups, starched napkins, tiny finger sandwiches and delicate petits-fours became the ornaments of my memory book, ones I treasure nearly fifty years later. My grandmother gave me the gift of feeling like royalty.
Well, we do things very differently in 2005, but there are still opportunities for giving the same gifts. My physical condition has not allowed me to recreate some of the experiences for my grandchildren that I would have liked, but I hope that as Molly leaves my home and moves to a place and a life where I am not a constant presence, she'll remember the tea party we had in my bed during my convalescence. . .the three Christmas Cookie Days she's shared while living at Granny's House. . .the candles and the spicy smells and the welcomes. . .and the funnest day ever at Kohl's and Target and Chili's.
I'll miss you, my dear Molly.