Food

You can purchase an all-inclusive cookie decorating kit, as well as a myriad of other high-end cookie tools and ingredients at Williams-Sonoma, 384 Maine Mall Rd., South Portland, (207) 772-9175

REALISM: gingerbread as imagined by Hopper, not preteen abstractionists.

When I was very young I lived next door to Maryanne Behunick, a wonderful Protestant woman who cooked with a vengeance. Maryanne was a conscientious nurse, who, at work in the emergency room of Stamford Hospital in Stamford, Connecticut, abided by strict rules and administered accurate doses of medication. But she refused to follow a recipe and never measured anything when at home in the kitchen. This is why her chocolate chip cookies were as fat as small fists and as hard as hockey pucks. She also believed in salting everything, including the A& P ham that she tossed in her oven till “whenever.”

Despite the fact that we were Jewish and my mother and father never ate ham, Maryanne invited us over every Christmas Eve to help decorate her tree and dine with her and her family on the two items she was notorious for: baked ham and chocolate chip cookies. I was ecstatic that we were the chosen guests on December 24 — not because of Maryanne’s cooking skills (my mother was a superb cook and baker and instilled in me a discriminating attitude towards food before I was five), but because Maryanne did everything non-culinary with love and a great sense of humor.

Although I try to be especially generous (like Maryanne) during the holiday season and prepare perfectly delicious gourmet delights (like my mom) the stress caused by striving to accomplish so much for so many usually leaves me exhausted. The activity that invariably pushes me over the edge is my annual cookie-making marathon. My days are spent baking snicker doodles, biscotti, madeleines and macaroons, toffee bars, pecan squares, meringue kisses, and linzer hearts; my nights are spent counting every cookie and wondering if I’ve really made enough.

I took my mania to new extremes this year when I decided to invite my best friend’s grandsons, Max and Alex, over to decorate gingerbread creatures. My inspiration for this activity came from the current cover of the Williams-Sonoma holiday catalog which features a masterfully decorated Santa Claus accompanied by his trusty red sled and favorite prancing reindeer. In order to execute this vision, I spent a fortune on copper cookie cutters, gingerbread mixes, food coloring, icing pens, glitter, and Silpat sheets. To expedite matters, I made the dough, cut out the shapes and baked them before the boys arrived. I even decorated a few myself so that the children would have some real models to examine before they began.

When 11-year-old Max and eight-year-old Alex arrived, I emphasized the power of tastefully tinted icings. (“Doesn’t Santa look fabulous with just a smidgen of pink in his cheeks?”) And pushed forward the benefits of restraint (“A little bit of sanding sugar strategically placed on just the outline of Rudolph’s blanket can give a dazzling effect, as you can see.”) And I warned them about the danger of a stray green sprinkle. (“Unwanted crystals can ruin the purity of Santa’s white beard.”) They listened politely to all that I said, but once they were ensconced at their respective prep stations, the ghost of Jackson Pollack seemed to enter both their bodies. They splashed icing in an impulsive manner all over their blank gingerbread canvases. Then they scattered sprinkles and drizzled food coloring in abstract patterns everywhere, relentlessly expressing the energies of their internal beings. I was humbled in the presence of all this action painting and quickly stopped trying to influence the boys.

Besides, what could I say when they looked up at me radiantly and declared, “This is so much fun!” When the two young artists had completed their work, we drank a cup of cocoa and tasted a few of the cookies. I thought they were disgustingly sweet, but the boys thought they were divine and I suddenly flashed back to my childhood Christmas Eve dinner at Maryanne’s. Who cares about the taste, anyway? It was the opportunity to do something special together during a magical time of the year that really mattered.

It’s been 35 years since I lived next door to Maryanne, but I still get a Christmas card from her every December. I think it’s time that I paid her a visit, so I’ll swing by with a tin of my linzer hearts on the way to my mother’s house later this week. I’d like to reminisce about the good old days and what better way to do that than with my unpretentious old friend. Maybe she’ll still have a few chocolate chip jawbreakers on hand. They’re really not so bad if you dunk them in coffee.

By the way, when Maryanne makes these morsels, she refers to the recipe on the back of Nestlé’s Toll House chocolate chip bag. If followed accurately, the recipe isn’t bad, but if, like me, you usually crave a more sophisticated baked good, I suggest you replace the Nestlé’s chips with some chopped up bittersweet Belgian chocolate. While you’re at it, you might incorporate the inner scrapings of a moist Tahitian vanilla bean rather than the required vanilla extract. Oh, and one last thing . . . unless you want to replicate Maryanne’s outcome, check your cookies constantly and remove them from the oven when they are golden!

Cookie chaos

From gingerbread to snicker doodles, Jackson Pollack reigns

By Jill Strauss