Capturing the Process
Baking and creating new recipes and exploring and modifying familiar ones are amongst one of my favorite past-times. Our family has a tradition that when one of us gets married, a family member gives them an cookbook that they will keep and fill with our favorite family recipes. Sprinkled between the pages, familiar family recipes are handwritten out and shared. I absolutely love this tradition. My mom was the first to begin this tradition when she gifted me my cookbook on the day of my bridal shower. After that, I made one for my sister and filled hers with so much love. She, in turn, created one for my oldest daughter Amanda and added her own creations. And so the tradition has begun.
I pulled out my, now over 30 year old cookbook my sweet mom made for me today and flipped right to the Cream Cheese Sugar Cookie recipe that my mom handed down to me. This is my favorite cookie of all time. It's magical and feels almost like I'm eating a whimsical little pretend cookie like I did when I was a child.
The page is worn, vanilla splatted across the words. The corners worn and turned in. Nevertheless, the recipe is written there, in my mom's beautiful handwriting, a trait I wish I had inherited from her. I've only made a single change to this recipe in all these years and it's a kind of biggy. My mom used a cup of sour cream in her recipe, which gave the cookies a bit of a tangier taste. Years ago I began swapping out the sour cream with cream cheese.
Fast forward from my childhood to my college days and beyond when I meet my bestie, Kristi Tone. I was a few years older than Kristi, but both our (now) husbands are in the same fraternity and we became fast friends. We were sharing holiday cookie recipes one day and she shared her Sugar Cookie recipe. The recipe was the exact recipe my mom used but without sour cream. In place of the sour cream, Kristi used a block of cream cheese. So, I made the switch and love the extra sweetness the cookie took on. I also added big chunky pieces of sugar and really made the SUGAR part of Sugar Cookies make a statement.
Over the years my sugar cookies have stayed as they did on the fateful day when Kristi shared her recipe with me. This is the same recipe that I used to create my first cannabis edible elephant sugar cookies. Tie-dyed little hippy elephants marched across plates and became a quick hit in the friend circle. We all love exploring our cannabis cooking and Sven the Elephant made his appearance and now transforms into leaves in the fall and little holiday trees and shiny stars in the winter. Drizzled with coco-cannabis chocolate and sprinkled with chunky sugars, these cookies can be up to a 60 mg dosage per cookie, depending on the quality of the dough and whether I'm cooking in Colorado or Florida.
My daughter has been doing the photography for my website and as you can see, she's quite talented with her skills of capturing the moment as if you were right there with me. I just love the images she's captured of the first batches of cookies I made this season. This is just the beginning of a magical holiday cooking extravaganza.
This season is different than any other I've experienced. With COVID-19 on the rise, numbers soaring and people's lives being turned upside down, it's often times challenging to find the peace and serenity of the holiday season. Perhaps this year we can find a little more comfort in just being home with the people closest to us. I for one am not rushing from store to store purchasing gifts. This year I'm staying home, doing my part to keep my family safe, my community healthy, and allowing the entire world to begin to heal from this pandemic. With online shopping and homemade gift-giving, I've got this. You've got this too. We all come together in our aloneness with support and love via zoom calls, texting, Facebook pages that allow us to visit and share funny memes and inspirational posts, and pictures of our families and pets doing normal, everyday activities.
We've got this everyone. Hunker down with the ones you love, snuggle with your fur babies, sit by a cozy fire, and burrow under a cozy blanket. Breathe. Be happy you are alive. And healthy. And loved.
I pulled out my, now over 30 year old cookbook my sweet mom made for me today and flipped right to the Cream Cheese Sugar Cookie recipe that my mom handed down to me. This is my favorite cookie of all time. It's magical and feels almost like I'm eating a whimsical little pretend cookie like I did when I was a child.
The page is worn, vanilla splatted across the words. The corners worn and turned in. Nevertheless, the recipe is written there, in my mom's beautiful handwriting, a trait I wish I had inherited from her. I've only made a single change to this recipe in all these years and it's a kind of biggy. My mom used a cup of sour cream in her recipe, which gave the cookies a bit of a tangier taste. Years ago I began swapping out the sour cream with cream cheese.
Fast forward from my childhood to my college days and beyond when I meet my bestie, Kristi Tone. I was a few years older than Kristi, but both our (now) husbands are in the same fraternity and we became fast friends. We were sharing holiday cookie recipes one day and she shared her Sugar Cookie recipe. The recipe was the exact recipe my mom used but without sour cream. In place of the sour cream, Kristi used a block of cream cheese. So, I made the switch and love the extra sweetness the cookie took on. I also added big chunky pieces of sugar and really made the SUGAR part of Sugar Cookies make a statement.
Over the years my sugar cookies have stayed as they did on the fateful day when Kristi shared her recipe with me. This is the same recipe that I used to create my first cannabis edible elephant sugar cookies. Tie-dyed little hippy elephants marched across plates and became a quick hit in the friend circle. We all love exploring our cannabis cooking and Sven the Elephant made his appearance and now transforms into leaves in the fall and little holiday trees and shiny stars in the winter. Drizzled with coco-cannabis chocolate and sprinkled with chunky sugars, these cookies can be up to a 60 mg dosage per cookie, depending on the quality of the dough and whether I'm cooking in Colorado or Florida.
My daughter has been doing the photography for my website and as you can see, she's quite talented with her skills of capturing the moment as if you were right there with me. I just love the images she's captured of the first batches of cookies I made this season. This is just the beginning of a magical holiday cooking extravaganza.
This season is different than any other I've experienced. With COVID-19 on the rise, numbers soaring and people's lives being turned upside down, it's often times challenging to find the peace and serenity of the holiday season. Perhaps this year we can find a little more comfort in just being home with the people closest to us. I for one am not rushing from store to store purchasing gifts. This year I'm staying home, doing my part to keep my family safe, my community healthy, and allowing the entire world to begin to heal from this pandemic. With online shopping and homemade gift-giving, I've got this. You've got this too. We all come together in our aloneness with support and love via zoom calls, texting, Facebook pages that allow us to visit and share funny memes and inspirational posts, and pictures of our families and pets doing normal, everyday activities.
We've got this everyone. Hunker down with the ones you love, snuggle with your fur babies, sit by a cozy fire, and burrow under a cozy blanket. Breathe. Be happy you are alive. And healthy. And loved.
