Holiday bakers, pre-heat your ovens!
More cookies will be baked this week than during any other time of the year. And most of those treats will be given away.
A recent report published by www.AllRecipes.com claims most bakers — 35 percent of survey respondents — will keep the holiday spirit alive, baking to show they care. They will give away their cookies. Nostalgia followed as a secondary motivator (27 percent); only 6 percent bake cookies to eat them.
All of the above apply to River Forest’s Mary Swindal and her daughters.
All in the family
Like her mother did with her, Swindal has been baking holiday cookies with her two daughters since they were little girls. Now grown and living on their own, her daughters continue to bake with Mary one day before the holidays. Most of their cookies are given away. “We’re a family of bakers. Some people don’t have the patience, but we like to bake,” said her daughter Nikki Elza.
The girls’ Grandma Gazell, who was of Lebanese descent, handed down the tradition of making Middle Eastern treats like mamoul cookies, powdered sugar-covered butter cookies filled with dates or nuts. Mamoul means “stuffed” in Arabic. “My girls were pretty young when my mom died. Making mamoul cookies with them is a way of keeping her memory alive,” Mary said.
They each claim a task. “I’m in charge of powdered sugar,” said her youngest daughter Natalie Swindal, an Oak Park resident.
“It’s very important that the dough stay chilled throughout the process,” explained oldest daughter Nikki Elza. She has launched Sugared, a cupcake company, from her home in River Forest and accepts e-mail orders at njselza@comcast.net.
Shape, fill, fold
Mary shapes the cookies, forming each one into the size of a walnut between both hands. She makes a well in the dough with her thumb, deepening it by rotating the dough between the palm of one hand and the thumb of another. Some dough is filled with ground walnuts; others with pitted, ground dates. Dough is folded over the opening of each, enclosing the fillings.
Mary presses dough balls into wooden mamoul cookie molds. She owns three; one was her mother’s. A pattern is carved into each mold, identifying plain, nut- or date-filled cookies. A fourth mold, which brands pistachio-filled cookies, also exists.
The tines of a fork can be used to press imaginative designs on mamoul cookies in place of a mold, a technique Mary’s mother sometimes practiced.
A dash of color
Her mother’s other personalized touch: color. “She colored nuts with red food coloring,” Mary said. The dye gave her mamoul cookies a festive hue, but the Swindals’ cookies have a subtle, natural, delicate look. A teaspoon of orange zest gives them a pleasant hint of citrus, a taste as light as the cookie’s texture. “They melt in your mouth,” Nikki said.
Mary insists the cookies, despite the molds and fillings, are simple. “Don’t shy away,” she encouraged, “it’s a different cookie, but an easy cookie.”