Candy Cane Blossom Cookies

2021. The first full calendar year without Paul. 2020 had him for seventy-five days. 2021 will have him for zero. The math is simple and cruel and I refuse to let it define the year. January in Duluth. The same. Always the same. Cold, dark, the lake smoking in the subzero air. I walked to Brighton Beach on Monday — the morning walk, Sven's pace, fifteen minutes there, ten minutes sitting, fifteen minutes back. The lake was half-frozen, the shelf ice building, the open water dark and steaming. The ships were in port for the winter. Nothing to identify, even if I could. I'm cooking with purpose this month. Not survival cooking, not grief cooking — intentional cooking. I'm working through the Swedish immigrant cookbook that Paul gave me in 2017, making the recipes from 1923, the ones written by women who settled in Minnesota and cooked their way through everything: immigration, poverty, winter, loss. The recipes are approximate ("enough flour to make a soft dough") and the results are imperfect and the imperfection is the point. These women didn't cook for precision. They cooked for survival. I understand this now in a way I didn't four years ago. This week: fattigman — Swedish fried cookies, thin and crispy, shaped like bows. The recipe called for "cream, the richest you can get" and "cardamom to taste." I used heavy cream and a generous tablespoon of freshly ground cardamom and the cookies came out golden and shattering and they tasted like 1923 and like 2021 and the gap between those years is filled with women in kitchens, cooking through whatever the world threw at them. Mamma called on Sunday. "What are you making?" she said. I said, "Fattigman. From the 1923 book." She said, "My grandmother made fattigman. In Uppsala." I said, "What did they taste like?" She said, "Like yours, probably. The recipe doesn't change." The recipe doesn't change. The women change. The kitchens change. The recipe stays. I made a January dinner: split pea soup. Thick, golden, the Johansson Thursday soup of every January. Eaten at the table, two places set, one bowl, one empty plate. The empty plate. It's still there. It will always be there. Not because I'm stuck. Because the plate is part of the table and the table is part of the kitchen and the kitchen is part of Paul and removing the plate would be removing Paul and I'm not ready for that and I may never be ready and that's fine. The plate stays. 2021. The women in the cookbook. The fattigman. The recipe that doesn't change. I'm one of those women now. Cooking through. Always cooking through.

The fattigman were already gone — shared with Mamma over the phone in spirit, eaten alone at the kitchen table in fact — but the impulse that made them didn’t leave with them. I wanted to keep my hands moving, keep flour on the counter, keep the kitchen smelling like something warm and intentional. These Candy Cane Blossom Cookies came next: shaped, pressed, a little festive even in the dead of January, the kind of cookie that asks you to slow down and pay attention to each one. The women in that 1923 cookbook would have understood. You bake what you have. You shape what you can. The kitchen holds you while you work.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 10 min | Total Time: 30 min | Servings: 36 cookies

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Red food coloring
36 Hershey’s Candy Cane Kisses (or peppermint chocolate kisses), unwrapped
3 tablespoons crushed candy cane or peppermint candies, for rolling

Instructions

Preheat — and unwrap. Heat oven to 375°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Unwrap all the chocolate kisses and set aside — this is easiest to do before your hands are covered in dough.
Cream butter and sugar. Beat the softened butter and granulated sugar together with a hand mixer or stand mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2–3 minutes. Add the egg, vanilla extract, and peppermint extract and beat until fully combined.
Mix the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add to the butter mixture and stir until a soft dough forms.
Divide and color. Split the dough roughly in half. Add red food coloring, a few drops at a time, to one half and knead until the color is even and as deep as you like. Leave the other half plain.
Roll and coat. Scoop about 1 tablespoon of dough — using a mix of red and plain for a marbled or striped effect, or keeping them separate — and roll into a ball. Roll each ball in the crushed candy cane pieces to coat lightly.
Bake. Place dough balls about 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake for 9–11 minutes, until the edges are just set and the tops are no longer glossy. Do not overbake — they will look slightly underdone in the center when you pull them.
Press and cool. Working quickly while the cookies are still hot, press one unwrapped candy cane kiss firmly into the center of each cookie. The cookie will crack slightly around the edges — this is correct. Let cool completely on the baking sheet for at least 15 minutes before moving, so the chocolate can re-set.

Nutrition (per serving)

Candy Cane Blossom Cookies — The Recipe That Doesn’t Change