On Holiday Cooking
And why I love it.
Welcome to the Tuesday post for all subscribers! On Friday, paid subscribers will receive a recipe for gingerbread cake, a not-too-sweet, perfect-with-coffee bake that you should consider for your winter mornings. It’s our second-to-last recipe of the year!
I love the lead-up to Christmas. Even as a kid, I knew that the anticipation of Christmas was what I loved most about the holiday season. It wasn’t so much the day itself as it was getting ready for the day—decorating, searching for the perfect presents, and, of course, cooking.
Last weekend, I was back at home celebrating the holidays with my family. I got to help decorate the house for the first time in probably seven years. We lit the menorah to celebrate Hanukkah. It felt like the weekends that I had left behind in my childhood, full of bright lights, handfuls of red and green MnMs, and long dinners around the table, watching candles melt until they went out with a pop of smoke. The sweet anticipation of the holidays made everything feel extra special.
The holidays are a time during which I find myself called to the kitchen. No matter how much I’ve cooked for clients, how tired I am of doing the dishes, and how large my last baking fail looms over me, there’s something that pulls me in and makes me want to cook: sourdough waffles with crispy walls for maple syrup; salty latkes still hot from the pan; sauerkraut so strong it makes your lips pucker; even prime rib, which I don’t eat these days.
I’m certain that this is because so many of my favorite holiday memories are centered around food. It’s been decades since we celebrated a holiday with my father’s mother, but I cannot separate my memories of eating dinner at her house from the smell of latkes frying and the taste of matzo ball soup. When I imagine her and her home, she’s always in the kitchen, and the lights in the family room are low. There’s gelt and a dreidel, and the table is beautifully set. When I think of celebrating Hanukkah with her, I think of salt, wrapped up with other exciting flavors and textures, opening the door to the foods that I love most as an adult.
In contrast, when I think of celebrating Christmas at my maternal grandparents’ house, I think of sugar. Malted milk balls were handed out as medicine, tins of Danish butter cookies circulated from room to room, and the pies of Thanksgiving were resurrected for another go. There was whipped cream and maple syrup and stollen bread and fruitcake that was mostly made for my uncle. And there were always, always, always monster cookies.
Nothing calls to me like the siren song of monster cookies. As long as I can remember, my grandparents made a batch of these legendary cookies to fuel our Christmas frenzy. The recipe is the stuff of legends: it calls for a dozen eggs, over two pounds of sugar, and 18 cups of oatmeal. It makes, according to the recipe which I’ve included for you below, “lots and lots of cookies.”
Of course, you can find recipes that are much more reasonable in size all over the internet, but somehow, I love the idea of making enough cookies to feed a small country. The last time I made these with my grandpa in 2020, we opted to make a quarter batch despite being in the midst of a pandemic Christmas. Somehow, they were still gone by Christmas.
Every year, I make a few trendy new cookie recipes for my cookie boxes. And every year, a little part of me thinks that these boxes can’t be Christmas cookie boxes without monster cookies. To me, these simple little cookies are Christmas.
Cooking during the holidays is to weave a tapestry of old and new. Traditional recipes make an appearance alongside new favorites and additions. Celebrations shift, and tastes change. I’m guilty of hyper-focusing on adding new and exciting recipes, constantly trying to give the menu updates and facelifts. This season, I can’t abandon that urge fully, but I am going to fold some of those traditional recipes back in. I hope the same for you—that you find comfort in the old and the new as you celebrate with your family and friends.
I hope that you’re celebrating the holidays your way this year. See you back here on Friday for gingerbread cake! In the meantime, shop my photos here and learn more about what I do in my every day life at www.pageandplate.com.