THE COOKIE OF CHOICE for Christmas during my childhood, for reasons only my mother can explain, was the bourbon ball. I don’t know when she started to make them, but I do remember knowing that the holidays were coming when my mother, a woman way before her time in her resolute reading of labels, avoidance of overprocessed ingredients and a hard and fast no-sugary-cereal rule, threw boxes of ‘Nilla Wafers into our grocery cart with abandon. (It might strike you that they’re called “‘Nilla,” not “Vanilla,” because, in fact, I don’t think there’s any actual vanilla in there.)
But processed demons that they are, those dry little cookies form the basis for bourbon balls, and so, once a year, I (who study labels almost as studiously as my mom did) buy them, too. These cookies are of the no-bake variety: You crunch the wafers up into crumbs, stir in pecans, and cocoa, corn syrup (again with the forbidden ingredients!) and, of course, bourbon; roll the dough into balls the size of a marble shooter; roll them in powdered sugar, and you’re done. Like a fruitcake, or gingerbread, they age well, keeping for at least a couple of weeks, if you can resist them that long.
As I got older, I remember making other Christmas treats: rolled and cut sugar cookies, decorated with sugar sprinkles and rainbow nonpareils; thumbprint cookies with raspberry jam centers; spritz cookies that I loved shooting out of the cookie press, and memorably, one year, gingerbread, or, more accurately pfeffernusse. A foodie at an early age, I had read about the cookie in a children’s book (Pippi Longstocking, perhaps?) and determined to write the editors at Gourmet magazine for information and a recipe.
At 14, I left home for boarding school. (And no, I wasn’t sent. It was my idea, and I had to beg.) I loved it, and made friends there who, though we speak too infrequently and see each other even less, feel like sisters to me. Despite the intervening (many) years, we know each other very well: maybe not the day-to-day dramas, but the deeper aspects of heart and character.
By my second year away at school, I felt so connected to my friends (as adolescents are prone to do) that when it was time to return home to Chicago for Christmas vacation, I pined for them. The only thing I could think to do was to send them care packages, just as my mother did for me, the entire time I was away at school. (To her horror, one of my classmates nicknamed her “Susie Homemaker” because of the packages of chocolate chip cookies and chocolate mint brownies that arrived at the school post office with startling regularity.)
And so, that Christmas, I baked and packed in a way I’d never done before (or since). Five boxes of treats, all the recipes I’d learned over the years with my mother at my side, but this time, I baked them all myself. Packed in tissue paper and plastic bags, I meant those cookies as a sweet reminder of the things that are hard to articulate even between best of friends: the pain of missing someone, the joy of having someone to miss that hard.
Do you send off home-baked sweets to far away sisters? Is there a single sweet that captures all your holiday memories? Proust had his madeleine, bully for him: I’ll take mine with bourbon, anytime.
BOURBON BALLS (The Gourmet Cookbook, Volume II, Gourmet, Inc., 1957)
In charming 1950s style, the book refers to these not as a cookie, but rather as a petit four. The recipe doesn’t list quantity served, but it usually makes between two- and three-dozen small cookies.
Sift together 2 Tablespoons cocoa and 1 cup powdered sugar Stir in 1/4 cup bourbon combined with 2 Tablespoons light corn syrup. Add 2 1/2 cups crushed vanilla wafers and 1 cup broken pecans and mix thoroughly. Roll the mixture into small balls and dredge with 1/2 cup powdered sugar.
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Ditto. I didn’t live in Chicago, nor did I know you or your mother…but out east in NYC, Grandma Marion (for whom my baby sister is named, but after whom, I “take”) was making the same bourbon balls. True.
I love that story Paige about your mailing cookies to your friend in high school. The summer before I went to college, I worked at one of the very first “gourmet” shops which sold these little butter puff pastry cookies called palmieres (i believe that is the spelling.) You could get big clunky versions called “elephant ears” at deli counters where I lived (which in those days all had fresh baked goods like prune danish and apple turnovers always.). My sister knew how much I loved palmieres so she found a reciple and at 14 made the puff pastry and the cookies which required, I believe, two bakings. Anyway, my parents brought this tin of homemade gourmet cookies when they came to visit on parents’ weekend. Only a sister would have gone to the trouble.
Right back at you, Dan. Your story is so, so sweet (as, apparently, is your sister.) Now the big question–has she come poking around here to read all the nice things you’ve been writing about her??
hooray for label-reading mothers! I think I’d faint if I ever saw my mother loaded Nila wafers into the shopping cart. (sadly, they’re not available at the Co op.) But I may just buy some behind her back, and make your lovely recipe for the Christmas party I have with my high school girlfriends.
I make lots of cookies every year, but the tradition started when I was a kid and baked them with one of my older sisters. I have a vivid memory of walking to the store with her, in the dark, in a snowstorm, because we needed cream cheese to make the dough for “nut cups” (pecan tassies). It wouldn’t be Christmas without them — and she tells me the big platter of cookies I bring to my mom’s is her favorite part of the holiday.
Welcome, Christine! That’s such a vivid and beautiful memory–I love it. Would you be willing to share your recipe? “Pecan tassies” sounds delicious–and what a wonderful, old fashioned name…
Just the smell of bourbon balls hurls me back to when cocktail onions in abandoned warm martini glasses were considered appropriate vegetables for us kids, and cheese and crackers covered the protein and grain aspects of dinner. Suddenly I’m short and in a small yellow kitchen with Margaret and our grandmother Marion. And the next thing I know I’m writing a check for $100 to some shrink in Manhattan. Smell is like that. But we knew that, didn’t we? http://thesisterproject.com/roach/i-could-smell-you-anywhere
Certainly! Here you go…others may know them by a different name.
Pecan Tassies
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 3-oz package cream cheese, softened
1 cup all-purpose flour
pecan filling (see below)
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Beat butter and cream cheese together; stir in flour.
3. Cover and chill for 1 hour or until easy to handle.
4. Shape dough into 24 1-inch balls and press each ball into bottom and sides of ungreased mini (1-3/4 inch) muffin cups.
5. Fill each with 1 rounded teaspoonful of filling.
6. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Cool a bit before removing from pans to cool completely on wire racks. (You can use the tip of a sharp knife to coax the cookies out of the pans.)
Pecan Filling: Beat 1 egg, 3/4 cup packed brown sugar, 1 TBSP melted butter or margarine, and 1 tsp. vanilla. Stir in 1/2 cup coarsely chopped pecans.
Yum–I think these are going on my Christmas baking list for this year. Right after I finish my bourbon ;-)
Our fav non-holiday cookie is Oatmeal Crisps and our fav holiday treat is fruitcake (not the kind with citron and other yukkies, true Southern fruitcake).
Daddy Senior suggested that we combine the two: Oatmeal Crisps (recipe from BHG) with an extra egg, candied cherries, candied pineapple, shredded coconut, golden raisins and lots of nuts added. Scruptious.
Welcome, Nell Jean! I have to track down the Oatmeal Crisp recipe to try your new and improved version–sounds divine. Do you know if there’s a link to the recipe somewhere?? And what’s a true southern fruitcake, for us northern-types?