The Smells of Christmas

This is the last cooking day before Christmas and it sure smells good in our house.  Baking creates the best smells, I think.  We started the morning out with biscuits.

Since biscuits have a pretty high death by heart attack factor, we don’t have them often.  But Christmas is special.  As a child I spent a whole lot of time at my grandparents.  That was before the days when they discovered biscuits caused heart attacks.  We had homemade biscuits every morning without fail.  The best part about biscuits is the molasses and butter.  I watched my grandfather plop a pile of butter on his plate, pour on a thick layer of Bob White molasses, mix it together with his fork and smear it on a hot biscuit.  I never forgot how to do that and he would have been proud to see me replicate his very motions this morning.

Just as the last biscuit smells were vanishing, the cake smells took their place.  I’m not especially fond of coconut cake myself, but it may be my mother’s favorite cake and thus a Christmas tradition in our household.  We usually spread the joy of making it around.  This year was my turn.  We have come down from our lofty heights in making this cake.  There was a time when we went all out.  The most complicated recipe we tried was one found in a Southern Living cookbook maybe 20 years ago.  It was the standard white layer cake, but with a lemon filling between layers.  I made this stately cake first since I found the recipe.  The next year I was more than happy to pass it off to mother to make and in turn the next year she was more than happy to pass it off to her sister-in-law to make.  The cake had 3 nine inch layers.  My aunt only had 8 inch pans.  Not a year goes by that we don’t laugh about her “stately coconut cake” that was taller than it was wide.  That was the last year we made that cake.  We have digressed so much from those days that today I made a Duncan Hines box cake in a 13 x 9 pan.  I will put a 7 minute icing on it, but I’m not grating fresh coconut.

Several years ago my mother started having a small family get togethers on Christmas Eve.  There were usually about 10 or 12 of us, but you would have thought it was the party of the year.  She went all out making heavy hors d’oeuvres served on her best silver and Christmas china.  Everybody got dressed up in their finest cocktail attire.  It was fun, but boy was it a lot of work.  As we got older, we looked for ways to make this event easier.  First came the store-bought hors d’oeuvres and serving plates that could go in the dishwasher.  Tonight we are having soup and hard rolls from the deli and sitting around the table in our blue jeans.  I think we have finally figured out what’s easy.  Besides, it’s the opportunity to be with extended family that counts, not how good the table looks.

Tomorrow, Gene and I will enjoy Christmas morning together before going over to help Kayley celebrate her first Christmas.  Next year will be more fun for her.  Mid-afternoon we will head back over to my parent’s for Christmas dinner.  All along the way, we will be counting our blessings.

To all of our readers, whatever your traditions, we wish a very merry, fun, and safe Christmas.