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Christmas cookies: The social circle
By PAMELA DAVIS
All that butter. All that sugar. All that goodness. We've just got to have them. Most days we let Nabisco or Keebler do the work for us. But Christmas brings out the baker in many people. We get on our hands and knees and reach back into the nethermost depths of the kitchen cabinets where the mixing bowls, baking sheets and dusty cookie cutters are stashed. We head to the grocery store for vanilla, baking soda and eggs.
Once made, the cookies are placed in boxes and wrapped with bows and given away as Christmas gifts. Or they are stacked in cookie jars and eaten as snacks. Some of them even make their way to Christmas trees as decorations. In St. Petersburg, a group of women who share a passion for baking cookies gather once a year to share their creations. To them, baking cookies is more than a holiday activity. It's show time. For the last 17 years, Selma Robinson-Ayers has organized a cookie swap for her friends. The parties are elaborate affairs that include cookie judging, craftmaking, entertainment, a gift exchange and the trading of freshly baked cookies. Though they use the Martha Stewart Living magazine and Web site for the cookie recipes, they're no bunch of Martha wanna-bes. These women have learned their craft through trial and error. They've done their cookie homework. They've collected tips, tried them out and passed along the results to their cookie-baking friends. Robinson-Ayers has created a cookie baking community. "Everybody bakes cookies, but we've chosen to make it quite special," she said. Her love of cookies and other food began when she was 5 years old and her mother made her the family's official taste tester. By the time she was in high school, Robinson-Ayers was baking her own cookies. It wasn't until she got married for the first time in 1971 that she started emulating her mother by giving homemade cookies away as Christmas gifts. That's where the idea came from for Selma's Holiday Cookie Swap. "We look forward to this every year," said cookie swapper Valerie Williams. "It's a part of the holiday season, and we couldn't do without it." * * * Robinson-Ayers, 51, starts planning the swap in October and centers the event around a theme. The theme for this year's swap was Tropical Yuletide, and a pink flamingo wearing a Santa hat graced the invitations. About a month before the party, cookie swappers begin creating fanciful cookie containers to hold their sweets. They have to make enough for each person at the party. Keeping the theme in mind, Yvonne Alsup this year made cookie holders from vases that looked like fish. Robinson-Ayers found light pink Christmas stockings and adorned them with hand-drawn flamingos. The women are judged not only by how good their cookies taste and look but by how creative they are with the packaging. Robinson-Ayers limits her cookie exchange to 20 people. And spots don't just open up. Someone has to drop out or pass out for someone new to get in. This is serious stuff, folks. The secret to the popularity and longevity of her Holiday Cookie Swap is the camaraderie, the sharing and, oh yeah, cookies to die for, Robinson-Ayers said. Though it seems as if the cookies are almost an afterthought amid the entertainment, crafting and gift exchanging, the cookies are "the tie that binds," Williams said. "The other stuff are add-ons. If there were no cookies, there would be no add-ons." Two weeks before the 17th annual Holiday Cookie Swap, held Saturday at the home of last year's best cookie winner Yolanda Hudson, five of the bakers shared their cookie baking advice with the St. Petersburg Times. Most often the women (Hudson, Williams, Robinson-Ayers, Alsup and Trinette Cole) agreed with each other on cookie-baking technique but also learned a couple tricks from each other. They all have fond memories of how they got started baking. "My first cookie was a jelly cookie," Hudson, 44, said. "My mother and grandmother always had a lot of parties at the house and did a lot of cooking. One thing they taught me was presentation is a lot of a part of baking and cooking. If it doesn't look good, no one is going to taste it." Cole, 36, started baking in middle school. "My first cookie was a peanut butter cookie. I used a recipe from my mother's Betty Crocker cookbook. No one helped me. I just went at it on my own," she said. "They came out so good that my mother asked me to make some more." Alsup, 58, waited a little longer than most. "I didn't start baking until I was grown and married," she said. "My mother didn't bake. My grandmother didn't bake. But I liked to eat cookies." Alsup's first stab at baking cookies came in the form of the chocolate chip recipe on the back of a bag of Nestle Toll House chocolate chips. Making good cookiesGetting started involves serious preparation, with all the ingredients at room temperature, and all gear cleaned and ready to go, the women agreed. "If you're not sure how old your ingredients are, buy all new ingredients," Williams, 51, said. "For show cookies or cookies you want to share, you want to make sure the ingredients are fresh. You don't want to use ingredients that have been around for awhile because they pick up the odor of other dry goods or might have expired. Old ingredients can change the taste of your cookie." When it comes to ingredients, buy the best, they said. "You shouldn't skimp on your ingredients. A lot of times you can buy something that's a little less expensive, but you pay for what you get," Robinson-Ayers said. The women in the Holiday Cookie Swap prefer to use cookie sheets or jelly roll pans with shiny surfaces. If shiny ones aren't available, place aluminum foil on them as a last resort, Alsup recommended. Dark cookie sheets, which absorb more heat, will produce darker, drier cookies. "If the recipe calls for parchment paper, use it," Cole advised. "Do not use foil or anything else. It will not work. The cookies will stick to the foil. Believe me, I've tried it." When putting the dough on the pans, don't place cookies too close together. Try to space them about two inches apart. Recipes usually say how to drop them (by teaspoonful or tablespoonful) or how to space them. Follow the cookie recipe instructions. Baking is a science, and tinkering with recipes can drastically alter the outcome. "A lot of times I try to adjust things, and it doesn't turn out exactly right," Robinson-Ayers said. "Usually when somebody designs a recipe they have pretty much made it foolproof." When it comes to cookie baking equipment, all of the women use hand mixers, but the group varies on what type of mixing bowl is best. Cole, a health inspector, uses glass bowls. "I like to use a glass bowl because you're not getting any residue from other foods that may have been in that bowl," she said. Robinson-Ayers uses McCoy pottery bowls passed down to her from grandmother and mother. "I'm old-fashioned. I'm not into stainless steel and all that kind of stuff," Robinson-Ayers said. "It's the best thing I own to mix in. I wouldn't use anything else." You can't be a lackadaisical baker when creating cookies for the Holiday Cookie Swap. Williams takes the day before the cookie exchange off from work, "so I can plan everything out and do nothing but bake cookies," she said. "It is a process where you have to have the time allocated without any interruptions." When it comes to deciding what cookies to bake, "I use recipes that are comfortable," Williams said. When she tries new recipes, like the Lemon Squares she's been working on lately, she keeps making them (in this case four times so far) until they are they way she wants them. "This is the good thing about the cookie party. I will call Selma at least 10 times and send Yvonne 1,000 e-mails," Williams said. "I will take any ideas. I will itemize everything I've done, everything we've talked about. When you still can't get it, then you start calling on your resources for support." The Holiday Cookie Swap crowd doesn't invent their own recipes. They find them on the Internet, in books and in magazines. Companies such as Land O'Lakes Butter (www.landolakes.com) and Pillsbury (www.pillsbury.com) offer cookie recipes on their Web sites. Once the cookies are out of the oven and cooled on racks, it's time to think about how to store them. When they're not placing their creations in their ultra-special Holiday Cookie Swap containers, the women use Rubbermaid, Tupperware or other air-tight containers to store their goodies. To stack cookies, they put wax paper between the layers. Robinson-Ayers puts her cookies in plastic freezer bags that she's labeled with the name of the cookie. She then puts those bags in tin containers or freezes them. "The cookies don't last long for me," Alsup said. She puts them in Ziploc bags, "but they never make it to the freezer. I have intentions to save them like everyone else does, but I never get that far." Cookie jars, though nice to look at, aren't a practical place to store cookies unless they have airtight lids. Although the 20 women who attend the Holiday Cookie Swap put valuable time, energy and creativity into their cookies, it doesn't bother them that their creations are eaten in a matter of seconds. "I enjoy it when everybody around me eats up my cookies," Robinson-Ayers said. "I like to see the expression on everyone's face," Williams added. "I live for the moment when somebody else has found pleasure in the cookies."
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Cookie recipes
