Baking Memories For Christmas
Have you ever noticed how many times food is mentioned in the Bible? It’s a lot! While food is connected with various sins, we must remember it is not the source of those sins. God made us to need food, and he made eating a pleasant experience. Food is necessary, and it is good. Breaking bread with others is some of the sweetest fellowship we’ll experience. Traditions involving food, by extension, are some of the sweetest traditions.
We’ve gathered a few contributions from the women of the church with favorite food-related (and one food-adjacent 😉) Christmas traditions. We hope you enjoy reading these and start or continue your own traditions. All recipes or links to recipes can be found at the end of the post.
From Melissa:
I vividly recall each Christmas season my mother and I, with an occasional taste test from Dad, spent days mixing, mashing, sprinkling, cutting, and baking a multitude of sweets. Once made, the various confections were lovingly packed into care packages that were sent overseas. Most went to family and friends, but often a few dozen boxes would be marked for servicemen stationed throughout Asia. My Momma and I would play Christmas music on the radio or record player (ahem, dating myself)--The Carpenters, Nat King Cole, Johnny Denver, Neil Diamond--singing the classics while Momma broke out the ingredients for her Christmas “mistake cookies.” I still have no idea what the original cookie was supposed to be, but Momma’s interpretation of the recipe in her newly adopted language of English all those years ago resulted in something curiously delicious and noteworthy.
Despite any struggles we were going through, including within our own little tribe of three, the baking, packing and sending of care packages always brought peace, repentance, and restoration. We would end our activities by watching the Nutcracker ballet. All the lights in the house, except for the Christmas tree, were turned off. A fire in the fireplace, a few leftover treats to taste, for posterity's sake of course, and Tchaikovsky playing into the late, late night. Christ’s coming--his ministry on earth, his death, burial, and resurrection, embodied into the memory and heart of a young child through the act of sending care packages of “mistake cookies” to the farthest outposts. (Recipe below)
May you likewise find solace with family and friends, whether in mixing up high culinary art or in making up a package of break-apart insta bake cookies. Though these things are material and temporal, I pray these traditions, memories, and recipes continually lead you to Christ this advent season.
From Dannah:
My Christmas tradition is making chocolate crinkle cookies for Ben and pizzelles for friends. I remember making pizzelles in elementary school, and my mom bought a machine later on. She gave me her machine, and it’s the one I still use.
Another good Christmas memory that stands out is the year my parents made homemade yeast donuts when my dad was laid off from work. We gave the homemade donuts as Christmas presents. It was a lot of fun helping to glaze them.
From Elizabeth:
My mother is mom to ten children, and as you can imagine, there was always plenty of work to be done when we were growing up. However, she often would set aside time to create fun memories for my siblings and me. One of my special childhood memories was making homemade ornaments out of ornament dough. The recipe was simple: flour, salt, and water, mixed and kneaded, rolled out and pressed with cookie cutters, a hole carefully scored for a string, and the ornaments placed into the oven to bake. The kids then would go to work decorating the handmade ornaments with paint and glitter. I am sure the kitchen looked like a disaster when we were finished. But many years after the cookie cutters, spilled paints, and littered glitter were cleaned up, the floor swept and the broom put away, my memory of this fun day has remained. Amazingly, these handmade ornaments lasted for many, many years. Each year they were hung on the tree and then carefully packed back away at the end of the season. And each year at Christmas they were a sweet reminder of that fun afternoon.
Every year at Christmastime, my sweet mother-in-law makes fruitcake. I have never liked fruitcake, but this one is so good! Crunchy, nutty, and sweet, with the perfect blend of spices. Peggy uses a recipe handed down from her mother, Bessie, who made it for her own family. Bessie died before I ever got a chance to meet her, but from conversation I have gathered that she was extremely kind and was beloved by all who knew her. The recipe is scribed on a fragile, yellowed piece of notebook paper in Bessie’s beautiful cursive handwriting. There are a few scribbles on the page, helpfully added by Tim’s older brother Randy when he was a toddler. Hoping to continue the family tradition, I obtained a photocopy of the recipe a few years ago. But alas, I have not made the fruitcake. The page is too faded for me to make out the words, but I have found one that seems to be similar.
From Mariah:
I grew up in a family that did not do much baking. My more ingrained Christmas memories are those of my mom’s classic Christmas music tapes, which had all the normal stuff like Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby, but there was also a song called “I’m Gonna Lasso Santa Claus,” which I've never heard anywhere else. I also remember her tinsel-garland-heavy decor, which style I always loved and have somewhat reluctantly let go of over my married years to find my own style, which I now love even more than my mom’s.
My mom did traditionally make non-baked Christmas treats.They were like Rice Krispies treats, but she made them with cornflakes. One was a wreath that she would color green and add Red Hots (the mass-produced ones you can find anywhere, as we lived a couple hours from Schimpff’s and had never heard of the place) as the holly berries, and the other was a Santa hat, colored red, with marshmallows for the fluffy parts. These treats, while good, never excited me enough to make me want to continue making them into adulthood.
My grandma, though she doesn't bake either, has a few treats she always makes for Christmas. She makes chocolate and peanut butter fudges that always turn out well, and I aspire to that skill level. She also takes pretzel rods (the big ones), full-size Ritz crackers with peanut butter, and peanut clusters and covers them with regular and white chocolate. My husband refers to these lovingly at various points throughout the year.
Our family Christmas also includes a tradition we don't identify as such, but I think it's funny and just makes me love my grandma more. For as long as I can remember she's made barbecue meatballs for the occasion. I don't remember the whole conversation, but once when I was in high school I mentioned I preferred the barbecue cocktail sausages (“barbecue weenies,” as we call them) and asked if she could make those instead. The problem with that, however, was that the meatballs are a favorite of one of her other grandkids, who happens to be the most charismatic and vocal of her progeny, and thus the unofficial family favorite. Mammaw just couldn't imagine denying my cousin his barbecue meatballs (or maybe she tried once and he said something about it. I could see that happening too). But she loves me too. So now she does meatballs AND weenies.
My own traditions, for the most part, are new. Five years ago I started making and decorating Christmas cookies with my kids, and I try to make sure we do it every year. Even with little babies and toddlers interrupting and making messes, and even though it is what some might call a hassle, it's too fun and sweet an activity to miss. My other can’t-miss Christmas tradition is making my own eggnog and sharing it with Dannah (usually in latte form). I think we started this tradition in 2017, and I usually post pictures of it on Facebook because I'm a silly millennial girl. Here’s the recipe I use, but I'm hoping to try a new one this year and see if we like it better.
I hope to add more Christmas season traditions as time goes on. Maybe my kids will come up with ideas. I look forward to the days when all of them are able to participate. And I hope one day they’ll want to be in charge of things like cookie decorating. We’ll keep doing what we can with what we have. God is good to us.
From Heather Miles
My aunt Bird (one of my dad’s sisters) started making buckeyes for our Christmas parties. Then my granny Helen (my dad’s mom) started making them. Then my mom.
The Recipes:
Melissa’s Cookies
This is the original recipe from the original Betty Crocker Recipe Book from 1955
Dannah’s Pizzelles
Makes about 6 dozen. Dannah says she usually halves the recipe.
1 lb real butter
2 c sugar
8 eggs
8 c flour
2 c brown sugar
2 T pure vanilla
Cream the butter, eggs and both sugars together. Mix well, then add vanilla and flour. Put it in the refrigerator overnight. Let stand at room temp. for a while before rolling into balls and pressing into the pizzelle iron.
Elizabeth’s Ornament Dough and Fruitcake
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/7705/festive-fruitcake/
Mariah’s Eggnog
http://thecookinggeek.com/eggnog
Heather’s Buckeyes
1 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
I box powdered sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
12oz Tollhouse chocolate chips
1 stick butter melted
A couple of tablespoons of paraffin or shavings
mix together PB, sugar, & melted butter
roll in small ball
put chocolate chips and paraffin in a double boiler and melt together
dip balls in the melted chocolate
Thanks for reading our stories. Keep sharing yours with others. May joy and thankfulness abound for you this Christmas, and may you have a happy and productive new year.