The favorite book of the moment in our home is Jan Brett's Home for Christmas. It is a fun read with amazing illustrations. One of the best lines in the book is, "Oh, I wish I had some of Little Sister's sweet noseprint cookies". It makes me laugh every time I read it. In case you don't know what a sweet noseprint cookie looks like, imagine a jam filled linzer cookie with the hole in the top cookie being made by a long pointed troll nose instead of a cute little heart shaped cookie cutter. I told the little babe that we could make sweet noseprint cookies (I like using the whole phrase - I think the "sweet" part is what makes it so funny) and she reminded me about it several times throughout the day. I have always wanted to make jam filled linzer cookies, but have never gotten around to doing it. Their multi step process is normally too time consuming for me. I want to be able to mix up a cookie, slap it on the pan, and have it ready to eat as soon as I pull it out of the oven.
I mixed up the dough before dinner and told the little babe we'd make them after she ate. She barely ate anything and declared herself "done". I rolled out the dough, we cleaned our noses, and we pressed nose to dough. No sweet noseprint hole. Barely a nose dent. Our rounded Krahn noses just aren't made for noseprint making. So I broke out the round cookie cutter that I had ready as a back-up. We rolled, cut shapes, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar (not part of the recipe, but it is the little babe's favorite part of cookie making). The next morning the little babe sifted powdered sugar, I spread some cookies with jam, and to be honest - it was a big disappointment. The cookies were hard with not a lot of flavor and when you took a bite, the jam squeezed out from the sides. Plus, they only look pretty when you first make them, because you can't stack them without smearing the powdered sugar on top. So not a practical cookie and the taste doesn't even make it worthwhile. I was disappointedly cleaning up the sticky sweet noseprint cookie mess when I realized that it wasn't the actual cookie that mattered. It was the making of the cookie, the bringing of a story to life, the silliness of pressing your nose into cookie dough, the unexpected "okay" from Mom to lick the powdered sugar, and the eating of homemade jam on a spoon straight out of the jar - that is what matters. The memories created during the process, the doing of something together, is what is important.
And who knows - those sweet noseprint cookies just might attract a troll tonight. I don't believe in perpetuating the myth of an old fat stranger coming into our house in the middle of the night, but a naughty little troll with messy hair living outside in the woods? I'm okay with that. He just has to find and eat the cookie before the dogs do, otherwise we'll have an early morning dogfight to break up.