November 30th, 2021

As has become our tradition, the day after Thanksgiving is the kick off day for the Christmas Cookie Baking Marathon!  The above photo is our kitchen and how it looked for the duration.  Product and baking implements EVERYWHERE!  It appears to be chaos but there is an organization to it that might not be apparent at first glance and there is a logic behind every decision.  

If you aren't a baker or at least not an insane marathon baker such as I, then perhaps you are unaware of the prep work that goes on before this all begins.  Step one is reaching out to the kiddos and asking them for the cookie requests. I always want to be absolutely certain that their personal favourites are included.  You would think that I would already know what those favourites are but you know what, people's tastes sometimes change.  AND every year I offer up at least one unexpected new cookie and perhaps that one was so awesome that it became a new favourite.  Assume Nothing is my policy.

So that is my starting list, the cookies that all six of the kids and Tim requested.  Next I cruise through the past few years worth of cookie marathon lists (yes I keep the lists) for ideas.  What flavours are not already represented in the first list.  I like to mix things up.  The final addition to the finale is coming up with at least one and preferably two new ideas.  This year I came up with one idea and another idea was suggested.  Woohoo! Two new cookies.

The next step is to read through the ingredients lists of all of these cookies and painstaskingly make note of precisely how many eggs and lemons, how much butter and what sorts of sugars are needed.  I have to estimate the amount of flour, bakers chocolate and shortening we will need to say nothing of making sure I have fresh leavening agents and spices.  

Which naturally is followed by a trip to the grocery store that is specific to just this event.  One grocery cart filled with all my baking needs. Well not all.  We could not find mint chips anywhere!  Thank goodness for Amazon.  Tim ordered that for me and it arrived in the nick of time.  Whew!    Once the products are in the house, I have to find a place to stash it all out of the way until baking day begins.  It's a small house and we have to get creative with putting things away.  From grocery day until baking day in the pantry, which is normally so very neat and organized, there are bags of powdered sugar with the canned goods and sacks of flour resting on cases of water and blocks of butter and boxes of eggs blocking the view of everything else in the fridge.  

Finally, the day after Thanksgiving arrives and I start early.  I bounce out of bed and into the kitchen with my hair pinned out of the way, ready to rock and roll.  Tim had already put the extra leaf in the kitchen table for me and I covered it first with a flannel backed plastic table cloth and then a layer of newspaper.  The baked cookies go directly onto the newspaper.  There are often cookies from 3 or more different batches cooling, being decorated or setting up on the table at one time.   I need space!

As the layers get messy with icing or sprinkles, I add another layer of newspaper.   Everytime the last sheet of one particular kind of cookie goes into the oven, the implements get washed and dried and I begin another kind of cookie.  Ideally, all of the cookies that are baked at one temperature are done back to back before having to change the temperature.  But it doens't always work out that way.

I have learned, over the years, that the more complicated cookies need to be done earlier in the day when my energy is highest and that bar cookies are perfect as they last cookie of the day.  As soon as that bar cookie pan goes into the oven, I can begin cleaning because those take at least 30 minutes to cook.  By the bar cookie comes out and is ready to sit and cool as long as it needs (which is always a long time), most everything is in the dishwasher which is already running, the newspapers for that day have been carefully rolled up and put into the trash, the floor swept and the counter tops wiped down.  It's not a full real deal scrubadub. Nope that will wait until I am completely totally and entirely done.  But for the end of the first day, a quick clean will do.

And other than eggs and milk, all the product remains out on my countertop ready to go for the next day.  Where I, once again, jump out of bed raring to go and it all happens again.  I no longer make 17 or 18 different kinds of cookies.  It's closer to the dozen range nowadays.  And I usually get it all done in two days and not three.   This year it was 11 different sorts of cookies.  I seriously considered doing at least one more, maybe two so it would be either a dozen or a baker's dozen.  And then Tim offered up the suggestion that perhaps 11 is a skinny dozen.  That kind of tickled me and as I was running out of both energy and product I called it done.

When it's all cleaned up and I am no longer feeling like Pavlov's dog jumping at the stove, pot holder in hand every time the timer bell rings and the boxes of cookies are packed and labeled and ready to go; when the kitchen floor is no longer sticky to walk on and I've dug sprinkles out of all of the little places where sprinkles like to hide; when all of the utensils and equipment are cleaned and put away and my pantry is once again tidy; when I've put my apron and pot holders into the laundry and scrubbed every inch of the kitchen within an inch of it's life I have such a feeling of accomplishment.

I will never cure a dread disease or solve an unsolvable math problem. There will be no Nobel prize with my name on it and I will never be the one to lead any sports team to victory.  It is doubtful that I will ever write a best selling author or be the CEO of some global company.  But I make a damned fine cookie.  

​I'm good with that.