christmas lack-of-cookies

Just hasn't got the same ring, has it?  The taste's a bit off, too.

I don't know why, but for some reason Australians aren't big into Christmas cookies.  Possibly because they call them biscuits.

I had one friend who made some chocolate chip (which they dub "choc chip") cookies and something gingery the week before Christmas, but that was it.  And I kind of think it was a bit of a fluke he just happened to be baking around Christmas.

Not that I was doing any baking, either, but at least I noticed what was missing.  It took me a minute, though, when my Christmas hosts asked what I usually ate for Christmas dessert (they asked this just as I finished photographing every angle of their their Christmas pudding (which isn't actually pudding, pictured left) and Christmas cake (which is fruitcake, not pictured)).  I couldn't quite remember.

Umm, gingerbread, sometimes, I told them, but even then that didn't sound quite right.  Then it came to me:  Christmas cookies!  No one's baking special desserts on Christmas Day because there are so many uneaten cookies everyone's trying to get rid of.

Where do all the cookies come from?  It's a bit of a mystery in the vein of how socks go missing out of the dryer.  (A mystery Australians, incidentally, know precious little about seeing as they use dryers only as decor and selling points of rental units, if that.)

Although most American households make some cookies (gingersnaps, the ones I don't know the name of, the other ones I don't know the name of, lebkuchen (which I'm pretty sure I don't like) and of course sugar cookies being the most common in my house), the number of cookies that appears tends to be far above the number actually within concocted.

An extra dozen or so surely come from a mathematical mishap at the cookie exchange.  Most churches run cookie exchanges around Christmas where every woman bakes 12 dozen cookies and arrives at the church to trade twelfths of her hoard with 11 other women.  (12 being, of course, a very biblical number.)

Then, neighbors, friends and strangers tend to drop off cookies because they've got more than they know what to do with, too.

And then, Grandma comes.

Now for many children and storybook characters alike this is a truly blessed event.  Their grandmothers, however, were not ancestrally German.

I have no idea what the current state of German cooking is, but the Pennsylvania Dutch German variety seems to have jumped ship a bit more than necessary when it comes to Christmas cookies.  I could be wrong, but I think they opted to take out all recommended quantities of chocolate and insert jelly instead.  In my house, anything including chocolate cannot possibly be deemed a Christmas cookie.  Ginger, yes, raisins, yes, jelly, yes.  Chocolate, no.

The result is a dry, jelly-filled morsel squished between six other kinds of dry, occasionally powdered sugared pieces of chocolate-less dessert that are supposed to taste good, but instead do nothing but add to your already off-the-charts daily calorie intake.  With none of the oomph of deliciousness.

This wouldn't be so bad in and of itself -- you could fairly easily avoid such cookies with a few helpfully ambiguous niceties -- but they distinctly prevent you from eating other Christmas cookies -- the kind brought by friends whose shallow definition of Christmas cookies includes any cookie made at Christmastime.

The ongoing problem then is that the rock-hard German Kekse end up sitting around for days upon days, the mother of more complete Pennsylvania Dutch heritage being the only one in the house who actually likes them, well into the time when the normal calorie count has actually stabilized and all your other friends are devouring delicious orange slice cookies, which they've told you about for years but as of yet never actually offered you any of, despite having been your best friend for over a decade.  And, alas, they're all gone this year already, too.  Maybe next year.

Thankfully I also have a father who likes dessert, but is of British descent and, while by no means a culinary master, can very convincingly whip up a batch of chocolate chip cookies.  Naturally, having chocolate, these do not classify as Christmas cookies in my house, but it's usually nearly New Years by this point so my mother is too exhausted to argue.  We can even snatch fingerfuls of dough and not get in trouble.

This year, in a blatant effort to provoke what she believes are my very latent domestic cooking instincts, my mother sent me plastic baggies of every spice known in the McCormack spice rack and a recipe for gingerbread.  I am happy to report the bay leaves were the only substance actually seized by customs (evidently they should have been chopped up), and the gingerbread turned out, amazingly, perfectly.

Except that, never having used the measuring cups before I put them back in the wrong drawer and proceeded to get it so stuck that I required the aid of three male friends simultaneously pulling with all of their weight to get it out again.

And then I proceeded to break the sugar bowl.

But otherwise, I can't imagine why I don't cook.  I guess the Australian Christmas spirit's rubbed off on me.  Bah humbug.