Today is the fifth day of Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories 2015!
The featured topic is – Christmas Recipes – and the focus is on . . .
The smell of cookies baking in the oven or perhaps mulled wine on the stove top. What are your favorite recipes during Christmastime? Are they different than the Christmas foods your mother made? What about your ancestors – what were their favorite recipes and Christmas foods? Share your favorite recipe and the story behind it. Post your favorite Christmas recipe and your memories of Christmases past.
Baking cookies was an expected tradition in my home for the holidays! So when we saw mom pull out her 1950’s Mirro cookie press and cookbook (remember this cooking gadget from back in the day?), it wouldn’t be long before the smell of baked sugar, caramel, and peanut butter cookies would fill the air and have us all heading for the kitchen to sample them!
There were 12 different cookie design disks that came with this cooky press. When I asked my brother, Elgin, which cookie design was his favorite, he said he didn’t have one. He didn’t care what the cookies looked like as long as he could eat them fresh and hot from the oven!
Eating freshly baked cookies was a must for my brother Jon, but what those cookies looked like was very important to him too! According to mom, he wanted all of our Christmas cookies to look like dogs. Dogs?! Yep, that certainly sounds like something my brother Jon would want – LOL! But, trust and believe, mom wasn’t having none of that! So as well as a dozen dog shaped cookies, there were Christmas trees, stars, and other festive shapes associated with the holidays baked too!
I don’t remember having a favorite cookie design growing up. What I do remember was hanging around the kitchen to eat any, and all, cookie dough left in the bowl and on the spoon. Mom’s cookie dough (and cake dough too) was so-o-o-o good! When I asked her about sharing some of those great cookie Christmas recipes with me a few years ago, that is when she informed me that the cookies we loved so much came right from the Mirro cookbook that came packaged with the cookie press (which she still has today) all those years ago!
Looking for a simple, yet fun, Christmas recipe to make with the kids for the holiday? Then check out this cookie recipe from the 1950’s Mirro Cooky Cookbook below. Enjoy!
Caramel Cookies
Time: 10 – 12 mins
Temp: 375 F
1 cup of shortening
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1 cup of granulated sugar
2 eggs, beaten
2 tsp. of vanilla extract
3 3/4 cups of sifted all-purpose flour
1 tsp. of salt
1/2 tsp. of soda
Directions:
Cream shortening; add sugar gradually and cream thoroughly
Add beaten eggs and vanilla extract
Sift flour, soda, and salt gradually, then add to creamed mixture
Fill your Mirro Cooky press and form fancy designs on an ungreased cookie sheet (if you don’t have a cookie press, spoon cookie mixture instead on the cookie sheet)
Bake until cookies are a light golden brown; yields 6 dozen
“The Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories (ACCM) allows you to share your family’s holiday history twenty-four different ways during December! Learn more at http://adventcalendar.geneabloggers.com.”
Claiming Kin Genealogy 