The Taste Of Childhood

I think everyone has one special taste, that one flavor guaranteed to make them feel like a kid again. For me, it is the taste of a "Grandma Cookie." Butter, sugar, vanilla, eggs, baking powder and flour are combine to make the dough. Logs of the dough are wrapped in wax paper and frozen. Once the dough is pretty solid, it is rolled out and shapes are cut with cookie cutters (the usual shapes are circles, moons, stars and card suit shapes - diamonds, hearts, spades, and clubs). The cookie is then topped with a cinnamon sugar and baked. The result is my personal heaven. Earlier today, my parents arrived for Thanksgiving with a big batch of these cookies. I'm writing this to get my mind off of eating them all tonight.


Whenever baking a batch of these cookies, part of the tradition is to use scraps from rolling out the dough to bake cookies in the shape of letters representing the names of the children that will be eating the cookies. My mother has taken that a step further in recent years and requests the guest list the week before Thanksgiving. If you are at the table, you get a cookie shaped like the first letter of your name. Here's my "J" cookie. Happy Thanksgiving.