Holiday preparations are in full swing around here. The tree is up, the stockings are being made, and I have become my own little gift-making sweat shop.
And the baking. Oh, the baking! While "sweets" around here are normally of the fresh or dried fruit category or - gasp - unsweetened carob almonds, during the Solstice we pullout all the stops - and all of my grandmothers' recipes.
We go mainstream - with actual sugar and white flour. Lefse, refrigerator cookies, crumcaka, molasses bread, sugar cookies, solstice spirals... Decadent, sweet, and wonderful. It has been a jouyful journey to tweak my grandmothers' recipes to fit our lives (purging all of Crisco, for instance). As the recipe cards above clearly show, edits are part of the journey and keep these traditions alive, even after my grandmothers have both moved on.
