Baking with Grammy

Yesterday, Madeline and I spent the day at my mother's house baking sugar cookies.  Well, actually, my mom and Bob baked while I mostly sat and watched.  I did cut the one pound of butter into small pieces and put it in the mixing bowl.  I also briefly wielded a Christmas-tree-shaped cookie cutter.  Madeline did not help bake at all.  This is what Maddie and I spent a lot of time doing instead:

I always associate baking with my mother (because she could beat Martha Stewart in a bar fight), and I have lots of memories of her baking cookies and fudge and bouche de noels at Christmas.  I hope as Madeline grows up, she'll associate her Grammy with baking and other warm grandmotherly things as well.  Especially since her Mumma's baking projects usually turn out like this:

Last year's melted sugar cookies.  Mmm, yummy.

Don't be fooled.  The roof and two walls are made out of cardboard.  Epic fail.  Just thank The Baby Jesus that I didn't take pictures of my homemade marshmallows.  They looked like bloody human fat.  

Yesterday's baking adventures were extra fun because my mom not only made a batch of her classic sugar cookies, but she dug up an old sugar cookie recipe from her great-grandmother's handwritten cookbook.  That's my great-great grandmother, and Madeline's great-great-great grandmother.  Pretty cool.

The cookies turned out extra pouffy and didn't really hold their shapes.  They tasted delicious though.  Although honestly how can you go wrong with a pound of butter, a tablespoon of vanilla, and a whole lot of sugar??  We decided great grandma's recipe was not meant to be rolled into shapes.  It works better in circles.

My mom gave me some dough so that I can attempt to cut my own shapes sometime this weekend.  I think I'm going to attempt to make some melted snowmen.  That way it won't matter if the cookies are extra pouffy.