Grandma's Sugar Cookie recipe

Here is my Grandmother's sugar cookie recipe, suitable for almost any occasion, and great to do with children or friends:

GRANDMA TRESS' SUGAR COOKIES AND NEVER-FAIL FROSTING


Sugar Cookies
3/4 cup shortening (part butter or margarine, softened)
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla (or 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract)
2-1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

Mix shortening, sugar, eggs, and flavoring. Blend in flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill at least one hour.

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Roll dough on floured surface with floured rolling pin and sock. Cut into festive shapes. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake only 6-8 minutes, or until very light brown.

Makes 5-6 dozen 2" cookies.

Buttercream Frosting
1- 16 oz. package confectioners' sugar
6 Tablespoons softened butter or margarine
3-4 Tablespoons milk or half-and-half
1-1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt

In large bowl, with mixer at medium, beat all ingredients until very smooth. Add more milk if necessary to make good spreading consistency. Add food coloring to small amounts of frosting for decorations.

Variations: orange frosting: use 2 egg yolks, 1 teaspoon grated orange peel and only 2 Tablespoons of milk; chocolate frosting: increase butter to 1/2 cup, melt then cool 3 squares unsweetened chocolate then add with 2 egg yolks to rest of mixture.

Makes enough for 5-6 dozen 2" cookies.

from Theresa Vandenberg LaVaque (Theresa's grandmother)

Four generations of cookies

I learned a lot about cooking from my mother and my two grandmothers - different things from each, as they each had their own interests, talents and culinary heritages. More on what I learned from them follow the childhood memory recipe - Grandma Tress' Sugar Cookies and Never-Fail Frosting.

Every December, my Grandmother Tress would send a box of her handmade sugar cookies, in every imaginable

 shape: bells, wreaths, stars, angels, trees and more, in every color and decorated with colored sugars, sprinkles and candied flowers. These were cookies for people who really like sugar, and they were eaten by our large family far too quickly, I'm sure. She would also send cookies for Valentine's Day (hearts), Halloween (pumpkins, cats, witches), Easter (eggs and bunnies) and other times just traditional round sugar cookies decorated with whatever holiday was imminent. We loved those cookies ... not just because they were good, but because they reminded us of Grandma in Green Bay (we lived in Chicago).

One on December visit when I was about 6 years old, Grandma taught me how to make "her" sugar cookies. I remember how she mixed brilliant colors with the tiny glass bottles of food coloring, and told me to always add one drop at a time to control the color. Each cookie was individually decorated, each angel had a halo, each Christmas tree had several baubles, each wreath its several holly berries and a bow. I imagine she might not have had time to do this when she was a young mother with five children, but clearly she relished the decorating as much as the actual baking of the cookies. My Grandmother must have been quite patient to do all this with a young child, and I returned home from that trip with a small tin of cookies I had cut, baked and frosted with her help. I remember forcing my siblings to stop and admire them sufficiently before devouring them as we usually did. 

Over the years, I made them with Grandma Tress again and again, picking up pointers from her about how to cut rolled cookies by slightly jiggling the cookie cutters, and how to make special shapes with sprinkles. She explained the "never-fail" part of the frosting, which came from it being made with the new product called powdered sugar, rather than a boiled syrup which required your undivided attention. She also taught me how to make her classic apple pie, showing me how to do "around-the-clock" rolling to ensure an even pastry, and how to roll the pastry onto the rolling pin without tearing and then ease it into the pie pan, even how to do intricate lattice crusts. I made these recipes with my own Mother over the years, and as my Grandma aged into her late 70s and making cookies became harder, we took on making them ourselves and sometimes even sending some to her.

These cookies were an integral part of my childhood, and after college I often made them for parties, where other twenty-somethings were often reminded of their childhood cookies. When my husband visited my family in Chicago and my Mother and I made these cookies, he was amazed at the colors and shapes and the large collection of cookie cutters and decorations we had for all occasions.

So when we had our daughter Madeleine, cooking was a part of our activities with her from an early age. I think we made these cookies with her first in pre-school days for a party. I began to add to my collection of cookie cutters and decorations for various holidays, and we made these cookies at least four to six times a year. Mixing the dough, chilling

it, rolling and cutting and baking, then multiple 

steps of frosting and decorating meant this was a full-day venture, perfect for a rainy Saturday. Madeleine loves making these cookies, and her friends enjoyed making them over the years with us as well, and still do. I've also taught her how to make 

Grandma's apple pie, our Thanksgiving tradition. In 2007, she made pies with me and taught her then-boyfriend Tyler and Revels friend Dave how to make them. She mastered the intricacies of lattice crusts when she made her first summer berry pie. She has learned well.

Since we were late to the digital camera world and not especially organized about our older photos, I found only one photo of the cookies from recent years, included above. Madeleine graduated in June 2008, and for their final homeroom party I made some "2008" cookies. I made a pattern out of cardboard, and cut around it with a knife to make each cookie. I frosted them with green and yellow, their school colors, and added candied mimosa flowers (the yellow balls). The plastic container above is filled with the 2008 cookies, and some lower layers also have candied mint leaves as well as green and yellow sugar sprinkles. As I noted, these are cookies for people who like sugar. And because these cookies combine happy family memories of three generations with my arts-and-crafts tendencies with colored frosting and decor, I really do love making them.

Some of how I learned to cook and enjoy cooking:

My father's mother, Grandmother Jewel, whose parents came from Ireland, was incredible at making main dishes -and the smells from her tiny kitchen were always enticing. She and my grandfather, a housepainter, lived in the same tiny 2-bedroom apartment on Chicago's near North Side for more than 50 years. I enjoyed watching her cook, and she always said braising worked for almost everything ... likely because it was the best way to tenderize inexpensive cuts of meat.

My own Mother, Joanne, cooked a lot ... in part because she was of the generation where mothers accommodated their family's tastes, like one of my brothers who would only eat pasta with butter for what seemed like about four years, and another who disliked anything green. She multi-tasked in our various small kitchens (in apartment and houses) before the word was invented. Though she used some of the new convenience foods of the 50s and 60s, she also knew how to stretch her food budget with from scratch cooking whose herbs and spices scented the whole house. She did love making special birthday cakes and themed parties for her five children. Since my birthday was at the end of October, I always had Halloween costume parties with wonderful decorations that stayed up for weeks after. Here is my Mother from about 10 years ago, making a Halloween gingerbread house with Madeleine and her friend Alexandra, the sort of arts-crafty thing she loved to do.

My mother's mother, Grandma Tress (creator of the sugar cookies, and for whom I am named) was an amazing cook, of French and Flemish heritage, whose specialty was baking. In the homey kitchen of the tiny, 2-bedroom bungalow where they retired, she spent many hours with us, baking cookies and pies. Since she and my grandfather lived in Green Bay, we saw them a few times a year, and every visit included cooking. I feel lucky to have inherited a love of cooking from all these women, and the chance to pass it on to my daughter and share it with others. Madeleine is the fourth generation to make these cookies, and someday I hope I'll have the chance to teach her children how to make their great-great Grandma's cookies, just as my Grandma taught me.

Whirlwind holidays

While 2008 was a grim year on many fronts, especially the economy, the end of 2008 brought a wonderful whirl of joyful activities and celebrations and for our family three big events: Madeleine's starting college at Wellesley, the completion of Barney's garage project, in which many family members and friends participated in building our new garage, and the completion of the lullaby CD, "Lullay My Sweet One", recorded with Shira Kammen and friends from Revels under the name The Bungalow Ensemble, and released in December 2008. The CDs are available at www.cdbaby.com. 

The arrival of the actual CDs (in cardboard instead of plastic cases and with recycled plastic inserts) came just a few days before Madeleine returned from Wellesley, and began a month of festivities. We opened Revels on the 12th, the day the CDs arrived, and the show was happily successful - and as we featured one of the show's songs on the CD, we were able to sell some to the audience as well. Madeleine saw the show with Barney, did makeup backstage, danced at the cast party, and - for the first time - was allowed to attend the after-party, for adults only. Since she was no longer in the teen cast, she attended and really enjoyed it ... more singing, food, drinks, singing, etc. We arrived home about 3am. 

While Madeleine was at school this fall, we felt like something big was missing from our lives - our daughter. Once she was back, everything felt "right" again. The first few days were a blaze of her seeing friends also returned from college, and preparing for the family Christmas. On the 23rd we hosted what apparently has now become our traditional caroling party - about 40 friends including folks from Revels and her high school friends with an enormous potluck and lots of singing. We went around the neighborhood singing carols, and with the experienced singers in the group we sounded quite good, I must say. People stopped their cars on the street to listen to us, and neighbors came out to ask for songs. One neighbor dialed her mother in Wisconsin on her cellphone so she could hear us sing. We sang in the vestibule of an upscale local restaurant, Oliveto - the diners seemed quite delighted. There is something about the fellowship and sisterhood of singing together that just seems truly happy to me.  I felt so fortunate to enjoy singing and celebrating with such wonderful folks.

For Christmas, we hosted Barney's parents, brother and sister-in-law, and had a lovely day together. We made a lovely leg of lamb roasted for 7 hours, preceded by some pate, olives and nuts and various amuse-bouche, and accompanied by a persimmon-hazeln

ut fall greens salad, green beans with walnuts, a squash-cranberry dish from my sister-in-law, and finished with our family's traditional Bûche de Noël and my mother-in-law's apple crisp.  Madeleine has become the queen of the Bûche now, it is one of "her"dishes, and in January she taught it to my sister-in-law and niece.

This year found us doing more activities than I ever recall in the past - in part because Madeleine's time home was short, so Barney and I planned things to do with her, like seeing the wonderful "Arabian Nights" at Berkeley Rep, and a New Year's dinner at Wood Tavern. We did more feasting and singing and even a Mummer's play at Hildreth and Chas' New Year's Day party. Mads and I went ice skating at Embarcadero Center - whenever I skate I remember the countless hours we spent skating as kids, something Madeleine did not get to do living in California, though she took my ice skates back with her to Wellesley. Madeleine and I enjoyed the Yves St Laurent exhibit at the DeYoung Museum with her childhood friend Nathalie and Nathalie's mom, Nancy, followed by Madeleine hosting a cooking party at our place for the 8 girls from her high school cooking party group. It was such a delight to see the girls again - they had certainly matured and grown up in subtle ways, but in other ways they still seemed like the same girls we've known for years. While our kitchen is small, I think they enjoy cooking here because I have always been happy to have Madeleine and her friends cook, do arts and crafts, or any kind of messy project here. Madeleine and Barney and I did a day-long workshop with Shira Kammen of Twelfth Night music, which was great fun, followed by a dinner with our friend Barbara Phillips. In 2007, we did a Medieval music, dance and cuisine workshop at her cultural center in France, Latitude (www.latitude.org). Throughout this time Madeleine had various get-togethers with friends, re-connecting and then parting again.

Toward the end of Madeleine's visit, we hosted a belated 50th birthday party for me to coincide with the official launch of the lullaby CD. Almost 100 folks attended, enjoyed Jonathon Moon's delicious food, danced to music by Shira Kammen and Charlie Hancock called by Erik Hoffman, which got almost everyone dancing the contra dances. The Bungalow Ensemble performed four pieces from the CD as well, which were well-received. Nancy, a friend from Revels. wrote wonderful new lyrics about me to a Revels drinking song, which the entire group sang to me after a glorious rendition of Happy Birthday. I thought to myself that this must be what heaven feels like: beautiful music, surrounded by people you love, singing and dancing and feasting and enjoying each other's company.

Our last family activity as skiing at Yosemite, staying at Barney's family cabin in Groveland. There had been little snow lately, so it was quite icy, and we all had minor-to-moderate injuries of various sorts. We did enjoy an interesting Chef's Holiday dinner at the Ahwahnee, which included some fascinating cooking demonstrations, and where we met some friendly people who enjoy cooking as much as we do. After we returned, it was a day of packing and helping Madeleine prepare to return to Wellesley.  We have had so much fun this past month. And then it was back to the airport, and once again standing by the security line, waving goodbye, both of us tearing up, watching her go. When she leaves, she never looks back - she told me once if she did she would burst out crying. For us, no such limitation, and the tears flowed copiously. We miss her so much. Fortunately this week was filled with the excitement of the inauguration and preparing to teach a tiramisu class and perform in a Robert Burns 250th birthday concert on Sunday. Next week will be quiet ... and harder for both me and Barney.