The First Stage of Holiday Baking: The Stress/ by Kathleen Gibbons, Palace Line Cook
“I’m not going to bake cookies this year…. it’s such a pain.”
I have a very small kitchen and minimal counter space, so I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to do Christmas cookies this year, I would only do one kind. The flavor of the Spiced Icebox Butter Cookies that I would eat by the dozens at my parents’ house every Christmas has been burned in my brain. Every year, they are the one cookie that I truly look forward to. My old favorites were little Mexican Wedding cookies, a nutty, round, powdered sugared bullet. Every time I went into the kitchen, I would stuff about three in my mouth, one right after the other. On numerous occasions my mother would walk in on me and ask what I was doing, and every time I would try to hold my breath and keep my mouth shut (out of fear of being yelled at for ruining my dinner), only to aspirate powdered sugar all over myself and the golden retriever that could be found at my feet, waiting for me to drop something (Boomer gets a LOT rounder during the holidays.)
I found myself in the grocery store today, buying butter and the necessary spices for the spiced butter cookies. I was planning on baking all of them today. After some thought, I figured it would be best to let the butter thaw overnight. But now I’m in the stressful stage. Do I have everything? Will one batch be enough cookies? How many do I give away? How many do I keep? Do I just make a double batch? HOW MUCH OF THE DOUGH AM I GOING TO EAT!?!? I’ve realized there’s no real way for me to keep calm. If I have a glass of wine while I bake, that might do the trick. But one glass always leads to two glasses, which leads to three, which leads to me totally losing focus, giving up on baking, and sitting on the couch watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding and flipping through US Weekly.
And ON TOP OF ALL OF THIS, there’s the stress of dealing with the kitchen itself. Mine, as those of most 24 year olds, is in a constant state of disarray. So basically, the obstacle is to clean the kitchen before I make the kitchen dirty. Again.
While the rewards are monumental (devotees will remember that I said, in an earlier post about family meal, that good food for the fellow employees more often than not results in a cocktail or a ride home), it is still a daunting task. I love to bake, and I love baking for friends, but it can be a remarkably stressful task. I’m sure some, if not most (or heaven forbid, all), of you think I’m being overdramatic and ridiculous, but it if there’s even one reader who identifies with this, then I’m thrilled. In the end, it’s worth it, and if it’s not, at least My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a really good movie.
The quote at the beginning of this post came about a month ago and was said by my mother, a woman who just earlier today told me that she sent about ten pounds of homemade cookies to my father’s office. I guess it’s in my blood.
Stay tuned for The Second Stage of Holiday Baking: The Fear.
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