Just the way the cookie crumbles
Lantern staff review their favorite Christmas cookies to make.
It’s “that” time of year again. People are getting into the holiday spirit by putting up their Christmas trees, making questionable choices in sweaters, and of course baking excessive amounts of cookies. My friends Lola Munson, Mari Mendivil, Jeremy Soine, and Lindsey Miest definitely helped me in adding to the number of cookies baked during this season. Although there were mountains of delectable Christmas treats, they somehow disappeared after only two days.
Now, one of the biggest disclaimers of our “cooking” is that is wasn’t all cooking per se. Our family does “Christmas melting,” which is a staple in our Christmas season diet. As Lindsey Miest, the captain of our cooking experience, put it, “Christmas melting is when our family melts almond bark and chocolate to make festive treats for the holidays. We make things called Rudolphs, which are chocolate-covered Oreos with pretzels stuck in the frosting that look like antlers. Christmas melting has been a tradition in our family for a long time and it’s one of the things I look forward to most during the year.” Taking over the daunting task of Christmas melting, I was running back and forth from the stove to the table where my masterpieces were coming together. Since being a melter isn’t as prestigious of a job as a baker, I had to make sure I didn’t get in the way of the “real” magic making. However, let me just say that my treats just so happened to be the first ones gone. They were a favorite of the family and they got a 9/10 score from my mom.
As I was melting away, the rest of my friends took on the job of bakers. Lindsey started off with the classic Pillsbury™ Shape™ Snowman Sugar Cookies, which weren’t hard to make, allowing us to have a warm-up cookie (or four) to fire up the Christmas Spirit. Next up to take over the oven were Mari and Lola with their “more important” cookies. Lola and Mari fought an intense battle of who got to use the mixer first for their chosen cookies. Mari won. Her homemade sugar cookies were the first to get mixed, so Lola’s cornflake cookies had to wait their turn. Despite her loss of the mixer, Lola still had an optimistic attitude when she said, “My favorite part of baking was being with my friends who are like my family. Shout out to Mama Julie (Julie Miest) for buying all of the ingredients.” As for Jeremy, the prospect of making truffles sounded like an excellent plan. Going off on his own (with the supervision of Lindsey of course), he began his attempts of covering the orbs of Oreo™ cookies in chocolate. Once all of the cookie making was done, we rated each of them. It was determined that Lola’s cornflake cookies were next best (just after the Rudolphs) with a solid 8.5/10 rating, Mari’s sugar cookies were a 7.5/10, and Jeremy’s truffles did surprisingly well with an 8/10.
More important than even Lola and Mari’s cookies, the fun we all had in our cooking experience is what really made the spills and cringe-worthy dancing worth it. Our captain, Lindsey, said, “I love baking, so baking with my friends was even better because we got to be silly and make tasty desserts all while listening to Christmas music of course.” Friends acting like fools really make Christmas fun, but having cookies to eat doesn’t hurt either.
Paige Miest is a senior and an A&E editor for the lantern. She is in tennis along with track, and she also volunteers through NHS and Interact. Watching...