Yes, Virginia, .....Cookies for Satan

   The title is not a type-o.  I apologize to those reading this that are sensitive about the religious figure of Santa Claus and cannot laugh during the holidays.  You should probably stop reading right now.  After all, Satan is just Santa with the "n" moved!  This is my version of a Christmas cookie kick-off.  The next few days will be Christmas cookies you might actually want to make for your family.

(clockwise from top left: snowman, "dinosaur", tree, free-hand cutting)

   A couple nights ago I was at my lovely friend Rachel's house (she took all these pictures, by the way.)  It had started out as just an invite to chill, have a couple drinks, laugh at her husband's outrage at the Titans for not scoring and then "Oh, now all of a sudden you remember how to play football?! You couldn't remember that 4 games ago?!"  Maybe I was the only one laughing....  While were just bullshitting about whatever, I mentioned that earlier that day I had wanted to make Christmas cookies but I thought my mom would get mad at me if I made them without her.  And Rachel said she wished she had gotten the stuff to make brownies.  The conversation went on for a bit longer, when Rachel said, "I wonder if we have the stuff to make some sort of holiday treat?"  Before I knew it, she had flitted off somewhere and returned with an amazingly ancient cook book!

   This cookbook was organized in the strangest manner I had ever seen!  But after a few minutes of flipping though, we found a recipe for brown sugar cookies.  There were very few ingredients and it was really basic.  It made a huge amount, so we cut it in fourths.  The recipe (below) is cut in half because the amounts are easier to deal with... and it is modified a little.  If you make these, know that the dough is meant to be stiff because it is a dough made for cut-outs.  Also, it is intended for them to be decorated with sugary things, so the cookies are not very sweet.  I will tell you right now, it will be WAY easier to make these if you have a rolling pin.  Ours were bumpy and had my fingerprints all over them.  I like to think it just gave them more character.  And later we realized that this would have made a great material for a gingerbread house (just bake the dough a teeny bit longer!)

 Left: Lumpy cut-outs, Right: baked cut-outs

   While making the dough we decided that we wanted to have Christmas shapes and decorate them.  This resulted in a 10:30pm run to Walmart and scouring the store for the only Xmas cookie cutters (that were not outrageously priced!)  They were little tree shapes.  After discussing it, we figured they were the best thing anyway because they would not require a lot of special things to decorate.  Our decorating materials included a large canister of various sprinkles and a tub of marshmallow creme.

This is honestly, the prettiest, most normal one we did.

   As we starting "rolling" out the dough, and cutting out perfect little trees, we quickly decided to cut out other shapes free-hand.  We had a couple candy canes and a snowman.  Then we felt Jew cookies were in order for our friend, Sarina.  Hence the dreidel and Star of David (that could have been a poinsettia.)  From there, the situation quickly digressed.  I can't tell you how we arrived at Satanic and Goddess symbol cookies.  Maybe it was from an earlier convo about rumors of Ke$ha and Rhianna being members of the Illuminati or that we both know Christmas is chock full of pagan symbols and traditions, but we got there.  And we laughed maniacally the whole time.  Oh, and FYI, we were not drinking at this point nor were revelling in drunkeness of previous drinks.  A little tipsy maybe, but still at the perfectly-OK-to-drive level (forget you just read that....)  Rachel cut out a goddess and the moons, we both cut out goats heads (or what we meant to be goats heads).  I attempted a pentagonal star....  And the very last scrap dough looked like an abstract dinosaur to us.  If cookies can be blasphemous, we are going to hell!

Please note our awesomeness

Brown Sugar Cookies
2 sticks butter, softened
1 C brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 C flour (maybe a little more)
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/4 tsp salt

   Beat butter and sugar together.  Add egg, vanilla, salt, and pumpkin pie spice; incorporate.  Add flour.  Thoroughly combine.  Use your hand to knead it a couple times.  Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.  Rool out to 1/4 inch thick.  Cut out shapes.  Place on a lightly greased baking sheet.  Bake at 350 deg F for 10-12 minutes (longer if your cut-outs are larger) until the edges turn a light golden brown.  Cool.  Decorate.