David Sedaris inspired Christmas Cookies!
Today marks the second of our twelve days of Christmas, and we are spending it reading David Sedaris’s holiday-themed collection Holidays on Ice. The collection contains a dozen humorous short writings centered upon the holidays. There are comical anecdotes from Sedaris’s own life experiences, along with satirical holiday letters, Christmas sermons, and reviews of children’s Christmas plays. Sedaris infuses all of these pieces with his rather twisted–and certainly not politically correct–sense of humor.
One of the most hilarious is “SantaLand Diaries”, a recollection of Sedaris’s time working as an elf in a Macy’s department store during Christmastime. He pokes fun at the seriousness of the elf-training process and the ridiculousness of applying for a position as an elf in his mid-thirties. With his dark sense of humor he shows the absurdities of the job–the parents trying to direct their children to capture the perfect photo of them with Santa; the Santas and elves who take their jobs way too seriously; and those who get bored with their jobs and start improvising, like the Santa who suggests the kids leave him sandwiches rather than cookies.
“He would go around the room and children would name different sorts of cookies, and he would say, “What about sandwiches? What if Santa should want something more substantial than a cookie?”
SantaLand Diaries
Forget it Santa, you’re getting cookies
The department store Santa might be craving some sandwiches, but we’re sticking with some good old-fashioned Christmas cookies. I love baking multiple different kinds of cookies over the holiday season–chocolate chip, peanut butter, M&Ms, you name it. But my personal favorite type of cookie remains cranberry white chocolate chip.
I’ve loved these cookies ever since I was a kid. The sweetness of the white chocolate with the slightly tart flavor of the cranberries makes such a yummy combination. These are always a hit at holiday parties!
The Recipe
This recipe has all of the basic chocolate chip cookie ingredients, with the exception of replacing the chips with white chocolate and adding dried cranberries.
Mix the dry ingredients. In a bowl stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt.
Combine the wet ingredients. Soften the butter in the microwave until mostly melted. Then in a large bowl combine the mostly melted butter, sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla, and mix until it’s not lumpy.
Beat in the eggs. Add the eggs one at a time and mix until combined.
Add the flour mixture. You only want to add about a half cup of the flour mixture at a time, or else it will be too difficult to mix. While it is certainly easier to use a mixer, for those of us who don’t have one it is not only acceptable, but also a great workout, to mix it by hand.
Add the good stuff. Stir in the white chocolate chips and dried cranberries until evenly mixed.
Bake the cookies. I recommend letting the cookie dough sit in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before making your dough balls. This will make the dough more firm and easier to scoop. If you are baking the cookies in batches, keep the remaining dough in the fridge until you’re ready for it. Line an ungreased cookie sheet with parchment paper. Using a spoon, scoop the dough into roughly tablespoon-sized balls and place on cookie sheet. Pop the cookie sheet in the oven (preheated to 375) and let bake about 9-11 minutes. They should be a nice golden brown color around the edges. Let them sit for a few minutes, then move them to a cooling rack.
Enjoy your cookies and David Sedaris’s humor, and check back later this week for another Christmas read!
1 comment
Having read this I believed it was really enlightening.
I appreciate you taking the time and energy to put this content together.
I once again find myself spending a significant amount of time both reading and posting comments.
But so what, it was still worthwhile!