When my twins were six years old and my youngest was three, I baked stained glass cookies for the first time, scattering a rainbow of crushed hard candies into rings of rolled dough. As the candy gravel melted into pink, teal and emerald swirls, the shortbread set around it to a butter-gold crisp. I held up a cookie so my kids could see the sunlight glow through the radiant crystal center.
They couldn’t believe it: Was it a fancy jewel? No? Then, a cookie with candy? Or a very candied cookie? And they were allowed to eat it? To bite right through the teeth-ruining, appetite-spoiling sugar-on-sugar disk? Yes! Such is the Christmas spirit.
I actually hate hard candies, but my heart still catches when I remember their eyes, the pure wonder that this simple cookie sparked. Enough so that every Christmas, I try to bake something new to give them that sense of amazement at each stage of growing up.
This year, the older two turned 21, so I turned a cocktail into a cookie, studding buttery dough with bourbon-soaked cherries and orange peel to capture the spirit of an Old-Fashioned. (If the fruit doesn’t do it, the final wash of whiskey on top will.)
Recipe: Old-Fashioned Shortbread
I’m not sure it’ll be enough to elicit wonder, but it’s worth trying. According to Michelle Shiota, a psychology professor at Arizona State University who has researched the impact of awe, a psychology professor at Arizona State University who has researched the impact of awe, “You got to push the boundaries.”
Elaborate icings and decorations become daily backdrops around the holidays, so Dr. Shiota suggests leaning into creative approaches, as she and her friends once did when they built a gingerbread Tower of London instead of the usual Cape Cod house.
It doesn’t have to be quite so elaborate, especially if small hands are helping. The way dried fruit and candied citrus in a simple shortbread look like rubies and topaz can be enough. When my children were young, they found wonder in designing their own stained glass by setting down patterns of crushed candies (and licking the sticky remnants off their fingers).
Ultimately it’s the company, not the outcome, that enriches the baking experience, Ben Mims, a dear friend and the author of “Crumbs: Cookies & Sweets from Around the World.” Coming together with family and friends just to make cookies offers a collective break from the pressures of real life because everyone is focused on a shared task. “Extra hands make it more festive,” he said.
And that may be the new way to find wonder with Christmas cookies, no matter how old the kids (or parents or siblings or friends or neighbors) are and regardless of how spectacular or plain the cookies look. When my children come home from school, I’ll be sure to have a jar of Old-Fashioned Shortbread all ready for them to eat — and even more of the ingredients to bake a few batches together.
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