The 5 Ring Circus: Frosted Christmas Sugar Cookies

When I was a little girl, my mom pulled a magic trick every year at Christmas. I'd leave for school in the morning, and when I returned that afternoon, there would be a double batch of frosted Christmas sugar cookies. The last few would usually be resting on the counter, fully frosted and ready to be devoured as an after-school snack. All the rest would be tucked away inside a giant metal Schwan's tin, which at one point held an enormous amount of ice cream, but had long since been cleaned out and re-used as a cookie container.

In our old farm house, the family dining room was basically an extension of kitchen, so Mom could keep an eye on our snack-and-homework rituals while starting supper. While I'd feast on those special Christmas sugar cookies, I could hear the first whispers of a homemade supper coming together in that very kitchen where my mom had worked her magic on the cookies just a few hours before.

Once I moved out on my own, I decided to make my own batch of frosted Christmas sugar cookies. I mixed up the dough and set it in my fridge. And that's as far as I got that first year.

At the time, I was working crazy hours at a Loop law firm. I left my apartment in the dark; I returned well after midnight most nights. I was just too tired to try and tackle the cookies. It occurred to me at one point that in the grown-up world, cookies don't just magically happen - someone puts a lot of effort into them. Over the course of the next two weeks, I wound up eating the entire batch of raw cookie dough straight out of the fridge.

Once Baird and I were married and we moved to the two-flat, I thought I'd try again. Still working crazy hours at the law firm, I figured that I'd need to plan a little more. I set aside two hours of a Saturday afternoon to tackle the project. That was basically enough time to roll out the dough, cut out the shapes, and get the cookies baked. It did not allow time for frosting. That year, the cookies got baked, but they were never adorned with frosting - I just plain ran out of time. As I sat eating my half-completed cookies, it occurred to me that this whole frosted Christmas sugar cookie thing was a lot bigger production than my mother ever let on.

Fast forward a few years, and my life was in a different place. I'd quit the law firm job, we had a house, and the girls were small. I thought it was the perfect time to spend a Saturday in December baking frosted Christmas sugar cookies with my own daughters. We worked all day. Or rather, I worked, and they "helped." I was so tired by the time the last cookies were frosted, I had Baird make a run to Pete's for supper that night. As I munched on a few cookies for dessert, I remember thinking, I don't know how she did it. How did she make all those cookies, get them frosted and clean up the kitchen before we came home from school? And then make dinner without complaining?

It's been more than a decade since the last batch of homemade frosted Christmas sugar cookies graced my Christmas baking. I decided it was time to try again.

When the kids came home this year, the kitchen was a wreck. Yes, the cookies were made, and they were all frosted, but the remnants of my work lay scattered about my counters, and I had several containers sitting around. I was trying to figure out which container would work best to hold all the cookies, since I don't own one of those fabulous Schwan's tins. Once again, I found myself thinking I cannot figure out how Mom did it. I did, however, manage to throw a respectable dinner together without complaining.