Myrna the Swedish Chef - Christmas Cookie Episode

We took our first foray into baking in Europe this weekend. For two-and-a-half years, I've skipped out on the baking, with the very valid excuse that American recipes don't translate. Sure, you can convert cups into metric, but there is the problem that flour and baking powder are ever so slightly different that straight conversions don't work (or so I've been told). But decorating cookies seemed like something Myrna would like, and we were getting a hankering for good old American Christmas sugar cookies (Pepparkakor are good, but you can only eat so many ginger snaps). Furthermore, we had lots of American-Swedish families that we wanted to get together. So Saturday, while Myrna napped, Chris and I rolled out dough and cut out sugar cookies (from a German recipe, just to keep things complicated).


First, I should point out that pigs are a big Christmas decoration. So we can all blame my Swedish heritage for my love of (Christmas) pigs. Any pack of Christmas cookie cutters you buy, includes a pig - isn't that just wonderful?


We had just taken the last batch out of the oven when Myrna woke up - so far so good. But then we started get messages from our Sunday guests, and all the kids were running temperatures. Needless to say, we were alone for the frosting, but we still had a ball. Myrna's first icing:


She's very concerned when icing gets on her fingers


After each successful icing, she announces "clap" and we are all to clap at her masterpiece


At first she was very careful with the sprinkles


On her second go, she dumped half the bottle on one cookie. It resulted in very right-side heavy sprinkled cookie, not unlike her recent paintings (and if you haven't read the recent review of her work, you are really missing out - it's far more clever than this account). She still made quite an effort to retrieve the bottle

And what batch of Christmas cookies wouldn't be complete with out a cookie ode to Piggy Wiggy?


We now have lots of Christmas cookies. Wish we could send boxes to you all, but I don't think the trip to them would be kind.