The temperature here in Brooklyn reached 60 degrees during the last few days. The week-end was more reminiscent of April than of December. It felt great having the windows open, especially because I had the oven going full blast. You see, as many Brooklynites were walking around in short sleeve T-shirts and shorts, I was making Christmas cookies. I should never have started. What a horrible job that is. But in my eagerness to get into the spirit of the season, I produced pounds and pounds of baked goods. I made coconut macaroons, hazelnut sablés with rasberry jam and almond crescents. Then there are the little cut-out ones. By the time I had the first batch of those in the oven, I wanted to cry. I wrestled with that dough like mad. It was either too thick, making the cookies look more like decorative floor tiles, or too thin. Do me a favor, if you have a fail safe recipe for those things, please send it to me.
You can tell that I went way overboard. I slaved for hours. So yesterday afternoon, just to get out, my husband rounded me and our teen offsprings up and we walked over the Brooklyn Bridge to the Manhattan side. It was beautiful. The sun was just setting over the Manhattan skyline. There were hoards of people on the bridge. Mostly German tourists, it seemed.
It was a lovely walk. We ended up in Chinatown at our favorite Vietnamese restaurant and ate delicious squid. Not too festive, but it was the perfect way to spend a Sunday evening. The pre-christmas chaos of Manhattan is hard to take sometimes, but it sure is a cool city. Back at home, we settled in to watch a movie, I lit some candles and we ate some of my cookies. They may have been misshapen a bit, but they taste pretty good. All that baking was worth it after all. Now if only it did not feel so much like spring outside!
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