Cookie Fest 2008...

Every year, my cousin and I get together and bake Grandma's cookies in an effort to lend some tradition to the season. Grandma was an awesome baker, having brought her skills -- and not much else -- with her from a small town in southern Austria just after the turn of the century.

Husarenkrapfen. Magdelenenschnitten. Lebkuchen. Spritz. Pfefferneusse. The names of them rolled off her tongue, but were hard for me to pronounce and made them seem so exotic, something to cherish. These weren't everyday cookies you wolfed down with a glass of milk; they were the kind of cookies that you took tiny, tiny bites of so they'd last as long as possible. They were the kind of cookies that you got as rewards for good grades and good behavior.

Grandma's been gone since both my cousin and I were teenagers, but just opening a tin filled with her honey ginger cookies propels me back to my childhood, where the fat red flowered cookie jar with the crack in the lid sat waiting on the breakfront in her dining room, filled to the brim in anticipation of our visit.

While I can't hold a candle to her talents, we do what we can to keep her legacy alive.

We've added some of our own favorites to the baking list over the years, but have scaled back at the same time. Twelve-hour days of baking 30-40 dozen cookies like we did ten years ago are a little beyond our reach these days, so we pick a few and go from there.

This year, my cousin had to bake 27 sets of star tree kits for her daughter's first grade holiday party -- that's six star-shaped, nut-free/citrus-free sugar cookies per set in graduated sizes. The kids will add a peppermint between each one and create a precarious tree of cookie, held together by frosting. It sounds risky.

Cookie Fest 2008 kicks off with tree kits and reindeer

In a stroke of genius, she sprinkle-coded each different size of cookie so she could tell them apart -- after a while, one layer starts looking like the next. A pretty neat trick, if you ask me.

I started in on the reindeer and Santa sugar cookies (with a few snowflakes thrown in for good measure), which we'll both ice later this week. Then we made Brazil nut crescents, chocolate peppermint Spritz, and finally, my all-time favorite, the Magdelenenschnitten. They're lemony, cake-like cookies with whipped egg whites, sugar and almonds on top.

Magdelenenschnitten. I promise, this is my last food photo!

Those may not make it back home for Christmas. They might be gone within the week.

The cookie list was shorter this year (I think all the tree kits did us in), but the rewards just as great. Lots of good family time, good conversation, and a chance to remember Grandma, who probably had no idea her two youngest grandchildren would be the ones to carry the torch.