Day: December 22, 2013

creatures are stirring…

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Christmas plans abruptly canceled, but some lovely, beautiful friends jumped to my rescue to invite me to share Christmas with them. Wonderful and touching – I probably will stay home anyway because I like spending holidays alone. But I don’t like being jerked around or having the rug pulled out from under me last minute. It’s all for the best.

I can hang out in bed drinking tea and watching movies (documentary Blackfish right now – always super disturbed by documentaries involving humans acting cruelly and stupidly toward animals. I am totally sickened by this). It reminds me though how gorgeous the Pacific Northwest is. I write about cruelty to whales – just as I hear the snap of a mousetrap going off in my bathroom. Brilliant. I’m a killer. Sure, of vermin. But a killer all the same. Where, oh, where is my gallant, mice-clean-up househusband now?

The weather is the strangest, least wintry, least Christmassy I have ever experienced since moving to Sweden/Norway. I don’t mind – it’s warm, very windy, rainy. It just feels unusual for this time of year.

Snickerdoodle cookies – nothing to do with Snickers

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I will say it again – snickerdoodles have nothing to do with Snickers candy. Every time I make these cookies, someone always asks, “Don’t these have anything to do with Snickers?”

When I made Halloween snickerdoodles, using black and orange sanding sugar, people raved like these were the best things they ever ate. Maybe this is because at Halloween, although there were choices, there were fewer choices than at Christmas. The Christmas snickerdoodles, using red and green sugar, were among the last to go. There’s just no telling what’s going to float a group’s boat (palate-wise). (Can you just imagine what “no telling what’s going to float a group’s boat” sounds like in a lovely Scottish accent, by the way?)

Christmas snickerdoodles

Christmas snickerdoodles

SNICKERDOODLES
Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C)
t. is for teaspoon; T. is tablespoon; c. is cup

1½ c. sugar (about 250g)
½ c. butter (113g)
½ c. shortening (113g)
2 eggs
2¾ c. flour (355g)
2 t. cream of tartar (8g)
1 t. baking soda (4g)
¼ t. salt (1.4g)
2 T. sugar (25g)
2 T. cinnamon (12.5g)
Mix sugar, butter, shortening, egg. Stir in flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt. Mix sugar and cinnamon together. In order to bake, roll dough into small balls and roll balls in the sugar-cinnamon mixture and bake on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 10 minutes.