A/N: Belated Happy Holidays!
Christmastime, 2016
Christmas Time Is Here, By Golly,
Disapproval Would Be Folly.
Deck The Halls With Hunks Of Holly,
Fill The Cup And Don't Say When.
Kill The Turkeys, Ducks And Chickens,
Mix The Punch, Drag Out The Dickens.
Even Though The Prospect Sickens,
Brother, Here We Go Again.
(Tom Lehrer)
Ducky loves to throw Christmas parties. Don't get me wrong—I do, too. I'm no Grinch. But he goes totally bonkers decorating, hanging lights, cooking feasts—and baking. Lots of baking. Lots and lots of baking. By stealth, I had gotten Victoria's carefully guarded gingerbread recipe; Ducky had a German raisin bar recipe that will knock your socks off; and my old standby ginger cookies were always a hit. Shortbread, sugar cookies, peanut blossoms and a good two dozen other treats rounded things out. (Even with all our baking, we didn't come close to the Girl Scout mom of mythic legends, Hazel Dahl. What we do in three weeks, she can pull off on a weekend… sleeping in.)
Between raising a rambunctious grade-schooler, keeping a sneaky centenarian under control and the various friends, family and hangers-on that make life interesting (May you live in interesting times—blessing or curse?), we were running around like crazed chickens fleeing Colonel Sanders, trying to do everything at once. (Hooray for entropy!) Bake cookies, make dinner, coordinate with the PTA, touch base with the teacher, wrap gifts, hide gifts (from Mother and Lexi), hide the Scotch (from Mother), check homework—this year I'm asking Santa to be cloned.
The kitchen smelled like an explosion in a spice factory. Cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, garlic…warm and cozy and yummy. (Garlic?! Yes, garlic. I was making spaghetti for dinner.) Ducky and I had plenty of near collisions; Lexi was smart enough to sit under the breakfast table out of stomping range, noshing on cheese cubes and apple slices and reading Charmed Life.
I almost forgot to add the cornstarch to the shortbread dough and followed that up by scooping cookie dough for two trays before realizing the chocolate chip cookies were minus the chocolate chips. The ginger whupass cookie dough (the name being a nod to the wonderful nachos at the Salty Dog down the street from the bookstore) had chilled overnight and I had already baked three sheets of them. They were cooling to the point that I could dredge them in sugar, three more sheets were in the oven and I had a platter of pre-scooped dough ready to go. I put warm cookies on the racks, make a note to sugar them on the next pass and put the next set of dough balls on the parchment. Ducky was on the other side of the kitchen making dough for his spice bars. I sidestepped him and gave the spaghetti sauces a few stirs and went back to the cookies.
Clearly I hadn't sugared them. They sat in their dark brown glory, naked of sparkle. I gave them a sugar bath, set them back on the racks and started scooping out another three dozen balls. It sounds like chaos. It is chaos. But we love it just the same. A platter waiting for the cookies from the racks, a tray of the last dough balls, three trays in the oven with nine minutes to go, three trays waiting their turn and… three dozen cookies I had again neglected to sugar. Gah. I quickly ran them through the bowl of sugar and set them back on the racks, then started prep for the next on the list, white chocolate raspberry snowballs.
Three minutes to go and—dang it, I had again forgotten to sugar the cookies! Clearly I was intending to and not actually doing the task, because the cookies didn't have the sparking top they always have. With an eye on the clock, I started frantically dredging cookies. When I hit about the dozen mark, I looked at the ones I had just finished—and froze. Nice, dark brown… and no dusting of sugar. I leaned over and looked closely at one I was damned sure I had sugared. Miniscule nooks and crannies in the cookie had what looked like water… I had a sinking feeling. I grabbed a cookie, bit—and my teeth almost curdled. It was like taking a face plant in a bag of C&H.
Ducky caught my expression. "What's wrong?"
I handed him a cookie. He took a bite… and flinched. "Apparently I sugared them several times. I usually use turbinado sugar but we're out. I forgot that with superfine it just about melts away, so it didn't look like I had done them. It's like eating a ginger flavored sugar cube!"
He shrugged philosophically. "Put them out halfway through the party. People will be a bit tiddly by then. They'll eat anything."
I wasn't sure if that was an insult or not.
I finished my mad pace on the ginger whupass and turned the oven over to Ducky. Within minutes the scent of sweet mingling spices filled the air, actually managing to overpower the savory spaghetti sauce. He had three trays in the oven at once, no wonder it was like a smack in the face.
"That makes me want hot chocolate!" came wafting from under the table.
"I'm with Lexi. Think we could snitch a few for dessert?" I asked.
"I don't think our guests would notice that one row had disappeared." That was delivered with a wink. I had made a batch—one!—of Gamma's fudge. It takes forever; you need arm muscles like a stevedore to beat it into submission, then you put it onto a greased cake plate. It's so dense you have to scrape it off the plate. I cheat—I usually use the Fantasy Fudge recipe on the marshmallow cream jar. But I didn't want Lexi to grow up without this memory at least once. Not just the fudge; the stealing thereof. The fudge gets a deep scoring so you can pry loose one piece—but if you carefully run a spoon edge down the side, you can snitch a full spoon of fudge and all the remaining pieces are only shortened by about 1/16". Ray did it. I did it. (Daddy did it, too, so he never had the heart to punish us when we got caught.) Lexi pulled it off several times, but since she was the only one doing it, it was pretty easy to figure out the culprit. We let her get away with it half a dozen times before giving her they hairy eyeball and telling her to stop.
While I wrapped up dinner, Ducky sliced the fragrant bars and wrapped them for the garage freezer. "I guess it's all the baking, but these smell rather strong."
I reached out and snitched a small piece that had broken off and popped half of it in my mouth. "Yeah, when you—" My eyes flooded and I started to choke. Ducky patted my back. "Holy crap, Ducks, do we have any spices left in the house?!"
He warily took the remaining bit from my hand and gave a cautious sniff. "Hmmmm…" He took a bite and gasped. "Oh, dear lord. I know what happened. I was doing a triple batch, so instead of a teaspoon I made it a tablespoon."
"Three teaspoons make a tablespoon. Right."
"Apparently I was concentrating on tripling all the other ingredients, because I carefully tripled the spices—even though I had already tripled them by using a tablespoon. These will blow your teeth out of your skull."
From under the table came a giggle. "Put them out halfway through the party. People will be a bit tiddly by then, they'll eat anything."
Ducky gave the table a mock glare. "Sucks hearing your words coming back at you, doesn't it?" I didn't even try to hide my grin.
They were both right. People got tiddly and they did eat everything that was put out—including one gentleman Ducky used to golf with… who tried so hard to eat the plastic fruit in the cornucopia decoration on the piano…