L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

Erev Xmas

December 24, 2008 on 7:37 pm | | In Food, General Musing

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house kids were hyperventilating. They were small and their little skins were hardly up to the task of containing the enormous fizzing excitement of a Christmas that seemed simultaneously imminent and maddeningly remote. As a distraction, I decided to have them help make gingerbread men. At right: Alan, 3, post baking, first year AC (anno cookie), below, Alan, 22, or 19 AC.

It was a howling success and has evolved into an annual rite with enough arcane rituals, required elements and passionate devotion to surpass the Catholic Church. The boys are in their twenties now and any time I float the idea of maybe skipping it this year, I’m greeted with gasps of horror so intense most of the air is sucked from the room and the windows bow inward.

The Making of the Cookies

The recipe is more or less from the Joy of Cooking to the extent that I follow any recipe. I don’t bake much because I am constitutionally unfit to actually measure anything. Perhaps someone who bakes all the time can eyeball it, but being baking-impaired, I force myself to dig out measuring thingies. It’s a true measure of a mother’s devotion.

A critical part of the ritual is never to use a cookie cutter. From early childhood, I have put knives into the hands of my children and let them cut the dough any way they like. Beyond monitoring the battlefield enough to make sure most body parts stay clear of the dough, I try not to interfere.

There is a sort of reverse evolution to cookies hand cut by children. The first pan are close approximations of people, angels and Christmas trees. But this gets old fast and the second pan devolves into simpler forms: stars, moons, and letters of the alphabet consisting of straight lines. Then there’s the mutant pan with zombies, rockets, UFOs and aliens. By the fourth pan, we’re down to triangles and Rorschach inkblot tests (Is that an amoeba or the pope?).

The Frosting of the Cookies.

The frosting is traditionally from a can in my cooking universe. Except this year. We’re snowed in for the first time ever on Christmas and I was forced to make frosting. It was harrowing, but has been given the “acceptable” rating by the cookie priests. On top of the frosting goes massed sprinkles and drools of colored icing from tubes.

We’re not talking Martha Stewart here. It’s about letting the process belong to the children. With the suppurating mounds of gooey frosting, bleeding candy dots and dripping ropes of red and green gel viscera they look more like something out of the Alien dinner scene than the cover of Gourmet, but the kids love them.

I’m looking at this year’s creations and wishing I’d taken pictures each year. They’re always artistic, but this year they’re more in the Keith Haring way than Jackson Pollock.

See more like that one:

• Chopping List
• The Magi had it easy...
• Day 15: Which Way to the Egress?
• Day 13: Juice of Affliction, Chili of Salvation
• Day 11: The Wall