Cookie Cravings

I need a sugar cookie. No, not one of those slice and bake kind or the ones from Pepperidge Farm, I need one of my grandmother's sugar cookies.

Trouble is, Grandma Hempstead died many years ago and it has fallen to me to carry on our cookie baking tradition. Throughout my childhood my grandma and I would spend a Saturday baking Christmas cookies that pleased the eye and the stomach. The recipe was a family one and I am thankful I still have the original recipe card in her handwriting that guides me each year when I bake.

Today would have been Grandma's birthday, so perhaps that is why I am so sugar cookie happy. We always had the traditional birthday cake at family dinners to commemorate the occassion, but perhaps she would have enjoyed a sugar cookie just as much? I do know she loved our baking time together just as much as I did. I remember sprinkling the colored sugar onto the finished product and coloring icing so that I could create a work of art: Santa Claus, a bell, a snowflake. She was proud of me for cleaning up the kitchen "without being asked" and reminded me that "that's what a good cook does".

There's no time in my busy schedule for baking today, but I will stop by the store and pick up some sugar cookies to much on later. One for me and one for honoring Grandma's memory.