I almost hesitate to write this post, as not too much changes from year to year! So, if you want to get the low-down on Cookie Baking Day, click here. In summary, the whole "Cookie Baking Day" starting the year my Grandpa Luecker died. It started out as a way to give my grandma something to do during the Thanksgiving Holiday and she LOVED to bake. Who knew it would turn into a huge tradition for us!? Grandma died a number of years ago, when Rachel was a baby, but the rest of us are keeping with the tradition.
Every year, we load up our car with cookie dough, cooling racks, cookie trays, and other accessories and head to my parents' house the Saturday after thanksgiving for the big event. What's interesting each year is how everyone changes and shifts into different jobs. Cookie baking day started when I was a kid, living at home. Now MY kids are involved. I remember how strange it was the first year we had Rebecca up in her high chair to bake the cookies. She was 11 months old (Christmas baby!) My mom made matching aprons for all of the participants in cookie baking day, and finally this year (due to all the grandchildren and the fact that they continue to GROW) she ran out of the original material for the aprons and had to make a new style of apron for the youngest.
Rebecca has now graduated to what will be her permanent adult apron. At 13 years old, she has been a big help the last couple of years making icing for cookies, in addition to the normal decorating tasks. This year, she even made cookie dough for us!
Rachel, at eight years old, also loves to cook. We've been surprised in the morning by fresh muffins from this kid! She also loves to make cookies and all other manner of things, and is even adept at breaking eggs without getting shell fragments in the bowl. This year, she took over some of the rolling tasks and cutting out the cookies and did an excellent job!
The last several years, Dianne and I have decided that while we LOVE making the cookies (and love eating them...too much) we really didn't care for the step where we divide them all up. So, we let the kids fill up a couple of containers of cookies and then we donate the rest to our church's cookie walk. Sometimes, we even buy back some of our own cookies! Since so many of the cookies head to the cookie walk, this year we made the conscious decision to just make the more colorful and pretty cookies. This unfortunately eliminates some favorites like chocolate chip, oatmeal cookies, and rocks, but the cookies we ended up with WERE beautiful.
I've intentionally concentrated on MY little family in this post, to try and keep it a reasonable length, but the total participants included my family, my mom, my sister and her son and daughter, and my brother-in-law. Each family brings 3-4 batches of cookie dough and we work ALL DAY. Each batch is a double or triple batch, too! Here's this years photo of the participants. Look at us all styling in our aprons!
This photo was taken AFTER the cookies were all baked, and we're still smiling! After we ate a nice soup dinner, most of the people cleaned up the dishes and bowls and decorating supplies and packed them away for next year. Dianne and I spent some quality time decorating dozens of little gingerbread boys and girls. By the way, using a pastry bag is the ONLY way to do these things. They are so easy to use!
So that's it for cookie baking day, 2009 style. Clearly, this is one of our big family Christmas traditions. Hopefully all of our kids will keep this going when we are no longer here and OUR aprons are neatly folded on the table.
The first year after my dad died (1976), was my parents 45th anniversary, I knew would be a bad day. I decided on cookie baking and it was so much fun. We had Christmas Music playing and it snowed a lot all day. By the way, since most of us don't want to keep many cookies in our house, I took 104 dozen to church for the cookie walk! Thanks guys.
Posted by: Gregg's Mom | December 15, 2009 at 10:25 AM
what a fun day--and I love the aprons
Posted by: kaye | December 15, 2009 at 01:11 PM
Although I don't participate in the cookie baking process, I have been know to wash some dishes and also work as the Official (self-appointed) Quality Control Manager; it is not a fun job, but someone has to insure the quality is there before they go out the door!
Posted by: Gregg's Dad | December 15, 2009 at 01:44 PM
That is AMAZING! What a cool tradition. And just so you know, you're not the only one whose daughter surprises them in the morning. Your daughter surprises you with muffins; mine surprises me with tearing her room apart in a whole new way. :-)
Posted by: Mel | December 18, 2009 at 09:42 PM