Holidays mean... baking! Mmmmmph mmf yum!

I don't care which holiday you want to call it, whether you're going for a festival of lights or a celebration of the birth of a famous baby, whatever your take on holidays of all sorts, mine has to do with sugar, eggs, flour, a few other ingredients, and a whole mess of boxes and tins and plastic containers.

I love to cook and to bake, for the sheer pleasure of the craft (we won't go into the cleanup end of things during this season. That's like discussing how much a girl loves the attention of her man, right in the middle of the Super Bowl). Leave it simply that I like to bake. I especially enjoy doing so in Mom's kitchen, because she has a working oven (actually, two, but who's counting?)... and, coincidentally, an automatic dishwasher (but that's not important right now). Plus, I like to bake with friends. There's something satisfying about having bunches of hands involved in something as fundamental as holiday food. One person chops, one stirs the stuff on the stove, one measures, and so on, and so on... We like cooking up traditions, that way.

One of my favorites, during the Christmas season, is a recipe straight from Pop's childhood in Charleston, SC. My father is not overly fond of Charleston. He'd have been much happier having been raised near his beloved Packers, but you went where your parents took you. While Grandpa was at sea in the nay-vee, Grandma moved lock, stock, and soup kettle from Green Bay to Charleston, just in time to deliver her only son, who practically then made a lifetime career out of grumbling about her questionable judgment -- not to mention her culinary skills, or rather, her lack thereof.

Yes, it's true, I had a Grandma who put army cooks to shame. When Pop went away to college, and ate at the notoriously bad cafeterias, he couldn't understand why anybody complained about the food there. It tasted "just like Mom's cooking."

Still, the one recipe which made its way from Charleston to our table -- to become an annual tradition in our family-- is one even Grandma couldn't wreck. This treat is known as

Benne Seed Cookies

Preheat oven to 375º F.

Ingredients:

2 cups (1 lb) Butter, (1 cup reserved)
2/3 cup toasted sesame seeds (benne seeds, if you’re from Charleston, S.C.)

2 cups sugar
2 eggs
4 Tablespoons water
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 cups flour

6 cups powdered sugar
6 Tablespoons whole milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract


Directions:
In a medium saucepan, lightly brown 1 cup butter and the sesame seeds. Set aside.

In a mixing bowl, cream remaining (unbrowned) 1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 2 eggs, and add 4 Tablespoons of the sesame seeds, well-drained, from the browned butter mixture.

Blend in water.

Add baking powder, salt, flour. Mix well.

Drop by teaspoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet.

Grease bottom of tumbler or other very flat, manageable tool, dip in granulated sugar, and flatten cookies onto sheet (about 1/4 inch thick. They should resemble regular sugar cookies, here). Bake 10 minutes, or until edges turn golden brown. Cool and top with following frosting:

In a large mixing bowl, combine powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla.

Take the remaining browned butter/benne seed mix, add to sugar mix. Stir until smooth.

These cookies are very rich and sweet, so they don’t need a lot of this frosting. Still, don’t be stingy. Benne seeds are good for the spirit -- or so the kinfolk told me.

Makes 6 dozen
Calorie, carb and fat counts: If you have to ask, go somewhere else. It's Christmas, dagnabbit!

My Bestest Friend Mari and I made the batch in the photo, yesterday. There are only a few left, now. I'm not tellin' who ate most of them. But I will say, he's not the one who did the baking -- just the dishes afterward. So he deserves what he nibbles.