As I decorate the house, I start to think of all we do to prepare for the celebration of Christmas. As a family we hang lights on the desk rail. We stopped hanging lights on the roof since Mike pulled a “Santa Clause” and fell off the house a few years ago. We put the tree together (artificial as I’m allergic to pine trees) and place the nativity scenes just so. I shop, cyber shop, wrap gifts, plan menus and of course, bake. I really like to make my Grandma Isabelle’s sugar cookies and frost gingerbread houses but I am small potatoes if you put me next to my mother. Thewoman is a holiday baking machine. Her Schroeder kitchen puts forth some of the tastiest holiday treats you could ever imagine.
I visited her the weekend before Thanksgiving to find her house filled with holiday sweets. She is the master of making rosettes. About 130 dozen a season. Do the math – that is one thousand five hundred and sixty rosettes made one at a time standing over a pan of hot oil. Each rosette has to then be hand dipped in sugar and packaged just so. My mouth waters at the thought of tasting these delicious treats.
I am sure rosettes have no calories as they melt immediately in your mouth. My guiltless treat. My kids think her house smells like Dunkin’ Doughnuts.
You would think with all this frying and sugaring she would be too busy to make hand dipped chocolate-covered cherries (both brandied and teetotaler), divinity, three kinds of fudge, pecan lassies, and my son’s favorite, chocolate covered cookie dough bites.
She throws in about 200 jars of homemade jam from the various berries she picked throughout the summer just to balance out the day. I get tired just talking to her on the phone!
How can I brag about making cake from a box when she’s whipping around a candy thermometer? Someday the rosette iron may be passed on to me—does this mean I will be making 1,560 rosettes a season? Sorry, Mom, sometimes I get bored making a batch of three dozen cookies. I start making them bigger just to get done sooner. I must be adopted!
Remember this December that
love weighs more than gold!
Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon
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