A little over twenty years ago, I decided I wanted to make Christmas Cookies. I could lie and say that I wanted to give them away to friends and family, but that’s not really true. I wanted to eat them. I was obsessed with vintage cookbooks and these incredible looking spreads of holiday cookie trays. I wanted that in my house.
Inspired by my Aunt Becky, and her Christmas cookie tins full of incredible treats each year, I decided to to start baking. And it turned out it was relaxing; a port in the storm of all things holiday madness - a release from the stress of daily life. At it’s most simple, it meant I spent 10 minutes mixing, and 15 miniutes watching one tray of cookies bake - but that was 25 minutes of mindfulness that I wasn’t getting anywhere else.
In what has become a yearly tradition, I now bake every day in December - my Decembaking. It is not always successful, and there are mishaps, mistakes, and missed days. But it is my holiday tradition. Some recipes leave me with one dozen, some with seven dozen. It adds up. Now my friends look forward to daily fresh cookies, we despair at the temporary loss of all kitchen counter space, and I look forward to a month of a home smelling of cinnamon and chocolate, of chile and vanilla - and everything in between.
During December, rapunxellicious will be dominated with cookies - as will my instagram, and my whole life to be honest…and I encourage you to join me, and to find your inner peace, your 25 minutes of calm, and thirty to ninety dozen cookies for yourself.