As I mentioned Monday, Sarah and I were quite the holiday cookie entrepreneurs. But when I first started baking, no one in the universe would have paid for our sweet treats.

The first time we baked cookies was when I was in 5th grade. We lived in Durham, North Carolina, then, and for the first time in my life, my friends and I were exchanging Christmas gifts. All of us had little teeny allowances – I’m guessing maybe a buck or two a week – so the gifts were going to be super modest. We had chipped in for the Erik Estrada poster that hung on our clubhouse wall, so the BIG purchase was already a done deal (for the record, I never was all that wild about Erik Estrada, and I never did watch CHiPs, but my friends were crazy about him).

After the Erik Estrada purchase, I was pretty broke, so I had the great idea of making cookies for my friends. In fact, I wasn’t just going to make cookies – I was going to make an ULTIMATE cookie. We had this one cookie cutter of Santa’s head that, to me, was the biggest cookie one could make! I mean, it was probably 5 inches across! I figured that if I made several of the big Santas and decorated them to the hilt, each would be a perfect gift for a friend.

Mom never liked cooking and despised baking, so I was on my own to figure things out. I got out the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book and turned to the recipe for sugar-cookie cutouts. What the heck was orange rind? How do you cream butter and sugar? I was mystified but determined. I measured, I stirred, I creamed.

I even sifted, using my mother’s old-fashioned hand-crank sifter that made a zrrp-zrrp sound when the wire went around. I sifted together the all-purpose flour with the salt and baking powder – or was it baking soda? Oh well – I’m sure it wouldn’t matter. I sifted so well (three times through! Sifting was fun) that the flour wafted high into the kitchen and settled onto every available surface. Mom swears we left a half inch on top of the fridge when we moved.

Well, apparently I sifted too much. And I stirred too much. And that whole baking soda/baking powder confusion? It did make a difference. The giant Santas were dreadful. They kind of disintegrated into dust as you bit into them, or, more precisely as you ground off a chunk before you broke your teeth.

But I was determined to make my beautiful Santas, the best Christmas gifts ever. I linked Santa’s hat with chocolate chips. I used a weak solution of confectioners’ sugar and milk to try to glue coconut flakes to his beard. I stuck big M&Ms on his eyes, making Santa bug-eyed. They looked nothing like the cookies I had dreamed of, but I wrapped them in plastic and tied a ribbon at the top. The gifts were ready to give.

I’ll never forget the look on my friends’ faces as I gave them the relatively small, dangerously hard, gaudily painted Santas as the big gift. They gave me tubes of apple-scented bath beads and a little box for jewelry. And they looked at their cookies as if I had handed them a pile of homework assignments. Luckily we moved to Texas soon after, so I never did have to gift them again.

What happened the first time you ventured into the kitchen? Did you have help? Did you set off the smoke alarm, or was it an instant hit?

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