Kipples take quite some time to make. If you rush them and are not precise and concentrated, they unravel as they bake and are a bit of a disaster. Done correctly, they give you a lot of time to think and reminisce.
Kipples are the Xmas cookie I most associate with this holiday and with my very long dead mother. I barely remember her but I make these cookies every year. In the midst of the flurry of Xmas baking, I always think of my mother when I make them but I am always so consumed on creating my own holiday, that I don't linger on the memories.
Maybe it's because I'm older or maybe it's because my daughter is baking a lot of the Xmas cookies this year, but I've had more time to relax and think about things.
As I made these kipples, I thought a lot about my time as a child, making these same cookies with my mom. She died so young that perhaps I made these with her 7 or 8 times at the most. Yet at this point in my own life, I've made them more than 50 times since then. There is no way she could have imagined me doing this.
I still have her recipe written in her perfect handwriting. Mine is more along the lines of chicken scratch. I slowed myself down enough today to imagine her sitting at her desk and writing this down. A moment in her life which has lived with me for all of mine. I can almost remember what that looked like. Her, sitting at her small desk in our dining room, circa 1958 or so. Little did she realize the legacy that this small act of writing down a recipe would leave.
When we think about what we leave to our kids, I have to think that a handwritten recipe which has been used year after year for a child's entire life is one of the best legacy's you can leave. It's also one of my most cherished possessions. I hope my kids will feel the same way.
Comments
I do however have my mormor's (grandmother on my mother's side) old cook books with her notes written down in them. No one wanted them when she left us so I was more than happy to get them :-)
Have a great day!
Christer.