Umbrian Snowflake Cookies —rsquo; The Sweet Reward at the End of a Long Prep Sunday

I drove to my mother's house in Orem on Wednesday because I do that on Wednesdays, and Wednesday is a day I have organized around my mother. The week was a fall week, the kind where the light through the kitchen window arrives at a particular angle and the freezer hums in a different register depending on the temperature in the garage. I made notes in my prep notebook on Sunday afternoon, the way I always do: meal name, ingredient list, cost per serving, prep time, freezer instructions. Twenty-eight bags. Two hours and eleven minutes. A little slow this week, by my standards, but Brandon was helping and the conversation was good, and I have learned, slowly and against my own grain, that the conversation is sometimes the point and the time is sometimes a courtesy I extend to my husband for being willing to chop onions on a Sunday afternoon.

The children are doing what they do, which is the central report of every week of my adult life. Ethan is 21, in Manila on his mission, and his last email mentioned a chicken adobo so good he is going to make me make it when he comes home. Olivia is 19, at BYU studying elementary education — the path she chose at age seven and has not deviated from once. Mason, 17, is in Brazil on his mission. His weekly emails are short and full of jokes. He does not write much about the work. He writes about the food. Lily is 15, in high school, asking the kind of questions in Sunday School that make the teachers uncomfortable, which I find difficult and also, secretly, admirable. Noah is 12, the comedian, the performer — the kid who does an impression of my disappointed face in front of company, and gets away with it. That is the family report. I do not have a system for these reports. I just listen and remember and call back when I said I would call back, which is most of the time and not all of the time, and the difference between most and all is the territory of motherhood.

The recipe of the week was baked ziti, which I have made some specific number of times in my life and have refined to a system that I now hand to other people in printed form. The version I made this week fed eight, cost under fifteen dollars, and required twenty-six minutes of active prep, which is within my requirements and not a coincidence. I labeled every bag — meal, date, reheating instructions, servings — because future-me is the woman I am writing for, and future-me is tired. I have stopped explaining the freezer-meal philosophy to people who already follow my work, and I have stopped apologizing for it to people who do not. The philosophy is simple: tomorrow is coming whether you are ready or not. You can either be ready or not. I pick ready.

Brandon and I sat at the kitchen island on Thursday night and did not talk much, and the not-talking was a language we built in therapy and have refused to unlearn. We have been married a long time. The arithmetic of it is the arithmetic of my whole life. There were years we missed each other in the same room, and there are years we find each other in the silences, and this is one of the latter, and I am old enough now to know that the latter is the achievement and the former was the cost.

Twenty-eight bags. Labeled. Dated. Stacked. The week, in the only currency that matters in this house.

The ziti goes in the freezer. The cookies do not. I have made some version of these Umbrian Snowflake Cookies on prep Sundays for long enough that Brandon now expects them, which is its own kind of system — and one I have no interest in dismantling. There is something faintly funny about spending two hours labeling bags for future-me and then turning around and making cookies that will not survive the evening, but I have decided that is not a contradiction. That is a reward. Twenty-eight bags earned these.

Umbrian Snowflake Cookies

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 14 min | Total Time: 34 min | Servings: 24 cookies

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar, plus extra for dusting
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold and cubed
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/2 cup finely chopped blanched almonds
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1 tablespoon whole milk (as needed to bring dough together)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
2. Mix dry ingredients. Whisk together flour, powdered sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl until evenly combined.
3. Cut in butter. Add the cold cubed butter and work it into the flour mixture with your fingertips or a pastry cutter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs with no large butter pieces remaining.
4. Add wet ingredients. Make a well in the center. Add eggs, vanilla extract, and almond extract. Stir with a fork until a shaggy dough forms. If the dough seems dry, add milk one teaspoon at a time until it just comes together. Fold in the chopped almonds.
5. Shape cookies. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Roll to about 1/4-inch thickness. Using a snowflake or star-shaped cookie cutter (about 2 inches), cut out shapes and transfer to the prepared baking sheets, spacing 1 inch apart. Re-roll scraps as needed.
6. Bake. Bake for 12–14 minutes, until the edges are just barely golden and the tops look set but not browned. Rotate pans halfway through for even baking.
7. Cool and dust. Let cookies cool on the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack. Once fully cool, dust generously with powdered sugar.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 105 | Protein: 2g | Fat: 5g | Carbs: 13g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 45mg