Cookies are more than butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, salt, baking powder and flour.
There’s another essential ingredient — love.
During the Christmas season, these sweet desserts are shared with friends and family. They often are made from grandma’s recipe files, torn and tattered with some illegible writing because of the years that have passed.
But they remain a way to honor a loved one’s passion for baking.
“Making cookies at Christmastime is about carrying on family traditions,” said Laura Magone, of Monongahela, who is the administrator for The Wedding Cookie Table Community on Facebook. “It’s such a big part of Christmas, which is why many people make trays of cookies to take to other people’s homes, to give as presents. It’s never just the ingredients. We take flour and sugar and we turn it into love.”
Magone announced via the Facebook page the Making Spirits Bright initiative, inviting members to make cookies for places such as nursing homes, homeless shelters and police and fire stations. Those interested in helping can email her at laura@lauramagone.com.
Cookie love permeates through a group of 80 bakers who call themselves the “Elf Brigade.” Most are from Western Pennsylvania. They make cookies to help others in need.
Lori Miller of Harrison is one of them.
They’ve adopted a family in need from Harrison where one of its members is dealing with an illness. They made them cookies for Thanksgiving, a turkey dinner, and will bring them trays of goodies for Christmas as well as other gifts, including a cookie-making kit for the family to do together.
The Elf Brigade will also package some of the cookies to be frozen so the family can enjoy them after the holidays — from lady locks to chocolate chip to buckeyes to the famous Kaufmann’s thumbprints.
“Helping someone else is the true meaning of Christmas at its core,” Miller said. “Those cookies put a smile on someone’s face. It shows you care. There is no better present than a homemade beautiful cookie that tastes amazing.”
Something as basic as a sugar cookie is a perfect way to spend time with children and introduce them to the power of mixing ingredients for a homemade gift, Magone said.
“A few cookies can brighten someone’s day,” she said. “It says to that person, ‘I made these cookies just for you.’ As bakers, we enjoy making the cookies, adding sprinkles and icing in reds and greens and other festive details such as shaping them into Christmas trees, stars and Santa Clauses.”
Cookie making is a fun Saturday afternoon for Kim Parkin, of Penn Hills, and her grandchildren. They gather around a table and make cookies and a mess, she said — but it’s a happy mess.
She lets them be creative.
“Anyone can buy a cookie, but those are mass-produced,” Parkin said. “When you make a cookie, there is a lot of yourself that goes into making that cookie.”
Parkin makes cookies year-round. She often gives them as gifts or just takes a tray to her neighbors to brighten their day. Some are getting older and aren’t able to bake like they used to. Parkin often makes double and triple batches in the place she calls “Kim’s Kitchen.”
She gathers recipes from everywhere and likes to try new ones.
“It’s nice to do something nice for someone,” she said. “The people at work love my cookies. One of my co-workers said my molasses sugar cookies taste like ones her grandmother made.”
Jacqui Confer, of Lower Burrell, makes the nut roll recipe her grandmother Eva Davidson passed down to Confer’s mother, Marilyn Krumenacker-Adams.
“It’s been in the family a long time,” said Confer, who won first place for her nut rolls at a Christmas Cookie Exchange in December of 2019 at the Hilltop Hose Company No. 3 in Harrison. “We’ve been making them for as long as I can remember. They were always for special occasions.”
Confer said when she was little, she and her sister would watch their aunt, mom and grandmother at her dining room table making the cookies on the weekend. Her dad ground the nuts by hand on Saturday and the dough was made and had to sit before it was ready to roll out on Sunday.
They had to wait a few years until they were old enough to make them.
“We learned there had to be a lot of nuts,” Confer said. “Each cookie had to be overflowing with nuts. These cookies are a conversation piece. I’ve had people tell me the cookies remind them of their childhood. They certainly remind me of mine.”
Magone’s 96-year-old mother, Wanda Magone, has been making biscotti every year for Christmas for as long as she can remember. She’s used a bottle and countertop to make the cookies when there wasn’t a rolling pin or cookie board available.
“Everyone likes them,” said Wanda Magone, known as “The Biscotti Queen.” “It is my favorite cookie because I don’t like a real sweet cookie. I’ve made, many, many, many of them. I’ve made cookies all my life. There was a time my family was quarantined for whooping cough, but friends and other family members would come in through the back door to get cookies.”
The biscotti recipe has been handed down through generations, Laura Magone said. She shared the recipe on the cookie Facebook page with her mom’s photo and received messages from all over the country from people who made the cookie.
“This is what the holidays are all about,” Laura Magone said.
It definitely is, Miller agreed.
“It is also something that is handmade and not an item you bought at a store,” Miller said. “It takes time and is the purest form of love because it’s made with your own two hands.”
Hanukkah
It’s not cookies, but donuts for Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights commemorating the recovery of Jerusalem. The Chabad of Greenfield gave away filled donuts earlier this week during the eight-day festival, which is celebrated through Dec. 6. A menorah has eight lights. For each of the eight nights, an additional candle is lit until all are illuminated.
Filled with jelly, cream or caramel, the donuts are made in oil. That oil signifies the miracle of the oil in the darkness. The menorah is a symbol of when the Jewish people retook the temple of Jerusalem. They weren’t able to find the proper oil to light the menorah — the oil takes days to press. They found one jug and it lasted for eight days.
Parents might give their children money during Hanukkah — some are real coins and others could be chocolate.
Kwanzaa
The sweet treat for Kwanzaa is fruit. The holiday was created in 1966 by Maulana Karenga, an activist and academic searching for ways to bring African Americans together after the Watts riots in Los Angeles.
He researched African “first fruit” or harvest celebrations. Karenga combined aspects of several different harvest celebrations to form the basis of Kwanzaa, an African American and Pan-African holiday celebrated throughout the world, as described on the official Kwanzaa website. Karenga went on to become a professor and chair of Africana Studies at California State University in Long Beach.
One sign of Kwanzaa is the Mkeka, which is a mat with a basket of fruit to symbolize the harvest and the African American celebration of families coming together — from elders to the children — after a successful harvest.
The seven-day observance begins the day after Christmas on Dec. 26.
Kaufmann’s Thumbprint Cookies
Ingredients
⅓ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup shortening, room temperature
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 egg
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon almond extract
2 cups cake flour
Sprinkles or finely chopped walnuts
Icing
Chocolate Buttercream
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
2⅓ cups powdered sugar
¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
⅓ cup whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon salt
Vanilla Buttercream
4 ounces unsalted butter, softened
1½ cups powdered sugar
½ tablespoons vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon almond extract
Pinch salt
Directions
For the cookies:
Heat the oven to 375 degrees.
Beat the sugar, salt, shortening, and butter until fluffy.
Add the egg and extracts and beat until thick.
Stir in the flour just until a dough forms (it may still be in chunks).
Form the dough into ¾ ounce balls (this is about 1 tbsp. of dough. A rounded 2 teaspoon cookie scoop will work.)
Roll in the sprinkles or nuts. Then press down with your thumb (or something with a round edge, like a rolling pin) to form a thumbprint in the middle.
Chill them on baking sheets in the refrigerator for 10 minutes.
Bake the cookies for 15 minutes or until lightly golden on the bottoms. Move to a wire rack to cool completely.
Icing:
Vanilla buttercream: Beat the butter until smooth and then slowly add the powdered sugar. Once it is all combined, add the salt and extracts and beat until thick.
Transfer to a piping bag with an open star tip. Or just use a plastic storage bag with the corner cut off.
Chocolate buttercream: Beat the butter until smooth and then slowly add the powdered sugar and cocoa powder, and beat until combined.
Source: The Wedding Cookie Table Community
Biscotti by Wanda
Ingredients
6 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
6 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
Makes about 6 dozen cookies
Directions
Beat eggs with mixer. Add sugar, beat again.
Add oil, vanilla and almond extracts, and mix.
Add flour that has been sifted together with baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix with a wooden spoon.
Spoon 6 rows — two each on three greased baking sheets.
Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes
With a serrated knife, slice cookie logs diagonally.
Place back on cookie sheets and toast in oven five minutes on each side.
Source: Wanda Magone
Buckeyes
Ingredients
1 cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups vanilla wafers, crushed
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1 pound powdered sugar
Directions
Mix all ingredients well.
Roll into balls of desired size. Chill the balls for about an hour.
Melt 1 bag of milk chocolate chips. Dip balls and drizzled chocolate if desired for decoration.
Source: Kim Parkin
JoAnne Klimovich Harrop is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact JoAnne at 724-853-5062, jharrop@triblive.com or via Twitter .
A secret cookie recipe: An important ingredient isn't bought, it comes from the heart - TribLIVE
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