Usher - Julia M. Ushers ultimate cookies

Julia M. Ushers Ultimate Cookies

Photographs by Steve Adams

Julia M. Ushers Ultimate Cookies

Digital Edition 1.0

Text 2011 Julia M. Usher

Photographs 2011 Steve Adams

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except brief portions quoted for purpose of review.

Gibbs Smith

P.O. Box 667

Layton, Utah 84041

Orders: 1.800.835.4993

www.gibbs-smith.com

ISBN: 978-1-4236-1935-2

To my mom

For letting me ride her apron strings and teaching me that baking from scratch is one of the truest expressions of the heart.

Mom decorating cookies with me and my sister Betsy, circa 1971. (Im the one still in my jammies, wondering if my star cookie is up to snuff!)

Im only being partly facetious when I say that I wouldnt have finished this book had it not been for C&H and KitchenAid. Most days, my basement test kitchen was a flurry of powdered sugar with me at the center of the storm, kicking up plumes of the stuff as I raced to meet pressing book deadlines. An impressive 600 pounds of powdered sugar were expended to produce the 300 batches of Royal Icing that went into this book! Naturally, I needed something in which to blend all this icing, which is where my KitchenAid mixer, affectionately called Old Faithful, came in. In 1996, Old Faithful dutifully accompanied me from cooking school in Boston to my bakery in St. Louis. Seven years of professional service, thousands of wedding cakes, and one cookbook later, she started the recipes for this book. Nothing, not even frayed electrical cord or missing spokes, stopped her. It wasnt until my final deadline that she had to be replacedand only because her off switch never turned off. Ironic to be retired for working too hard, wouldnt you say?

There are, of course, real live peoplenot just inanimate objects with namesto thank! My first book Cookie Swap was four years in the making, and while this project went from contract to bookstore about four times faster, I leaned on as many people, if not more, along the way. You see, no matter how simple you think creative projects are going to be, they have a way of morphing into more than ever dreamed. So, first, thanks to all of my loyal Cookie Swap fans for launching that book into its ninth printing and for providing just the sustenance needed on my 120-stop book tour. Without your support, I probably wouldnt have written a second bookand certainly not so close on the heels of the first. Thank you, too, for asking me the hard decorating questions and always answering those I posted to Facebook. I am especially grateful to Jane Bonacci, Carolyn Lawrence, Debbie Lynskey, Kathie Reuter, Joanne Shellan, and Robin Traversy for the cookie decorating conundrums they posed for sidebars in the book and the companion FAQ pdf on my website, and to Marian Poirier of the popular blog Sweetopia for promoting my first book and standing at the ready to push this one.

While there were many suppliers who, wittingly and unwittingly, contributed wonderful props and products for Ultimate Cookies, I feel compelled to single out a few. First, Nancy Lee Quist, Sally Rue, and the rest of the staff at fancyflours.com. Im sure they know how many last-minute orders they filled for me. (I lost count months ago!) All I remember is that they filled each and every one with incredible style and speed. Second, the folks at Chicago Metallic. What a privilege it was to experiment (for free) with their very fine bakeware. And last but not least, Carol Fyhrie and Chris Priest of Warson Woods Antiques Gallery, and the Culbertson family of Quintessentials Antiques. I routinely raided their stores in quest of the perfect accessory, and they never once flinched.

My gratitude also goes to my immensely supportive agent (and sometimes therapist) Sorche Fairbank, my capable editors Lisa Anderson and Jennifer Adams, and the many other talented folks at Gibbs Smith, Publisher. Of course, not to be forgotten is Steve Adams, my always clear-headed photographer, who kept up with an unprecedented 30-plus shots a day, over nine 10-hour days. (Phew! I still get tired thinking about those numbers.)

Now that the powdered sugar has settled, theres one person, though, who rises above the plumes. Bryan, my soul mate and strength, thank you for listening patiently, for making (I wont say how many) dinners after I had baked myself silly all day, for critiquing the occasional snake or lizard cookie, and, most important, for not retiring me for working too hard. I love you.

My education in food began as early as I can remember. There were the berries plucked plump and juicy from our backyard brambles, the eggs still warm from our flock of Rhode Island Reds, and the many herbs and edible flowers that Mom grew in her beloved country-style (read overgrown) garden. The ingredients were just the beginning though. The greatest learning came after these goodies landed in the kitchen, where Mom turned them into everything from Anadama bread and rose geranium jelly to blackberry cobbler and Christmas croissants. My mom worked hard to provide her young family with the food she thought was best: food with a direct connection to the earth as well as to her heart and hands.

I rode her apron strings at every opportunity, and, as it turned out, I was a quick study. It didnt take too many bites of Moms chocolate-nut wafers or cinnamon-kissed stollen to understand why Chips Ahoy and Sara Lees had no place in our house. (Occasionally, Dad would sneak home a bag of store-bought cookies or a boxed cake, only to find that Mom had promptly banished the item to the back of a cabinet, well out of the kids reach.) But Moms lessons werent only about weighty matters such as quality of ingredients and local sourcing. She showed me and my sibs, Betsy and Chris, the value of shared fun in the kitchen, too. While semi-homemade, 30-minute meals have sadly become de rigueur these days, they were a foreign concept to us. We were taught from the get-go that time in the kitchen, no matter how long, was time well spent.

One of our most anticipated kitchen adventures was in the weeks preceding Christmas when we donned Moms frilly June Cleaver-esque aprons and gathered all of our creative reserve for our annual cookie decorating spree. Mom would mix up her famous anise-scented sugar cookie and gingerbread doughs and we three kids would help by adding gingerbread people, invariably maimed or disfigured, and other cutouts to the cookie sheets. While we got more icing in and on us than on our cookies, it didnt matter. Even crooked cutouts and errant icing blobs garnered Moms highest praise, and so I always ended up beaming. What an amazing sense of accomplishment this time together gave me. It was hard to let my cookies go (we often trundled them into tins and off to cookie swaps), but seeing others eyes light up when I unveiled my treats made the giving easy.

And what more personal gift than a cookie made from scratch and beautifully decorated by hand? The present of a lovely cookie is truly transcendent. We all know this instinctively. We bask in its fragrance as it takes shape in the oven. We ooh and ahh over its artful decoration. We smile as its buttery crumbs caress our tongues. Its a rare gift that not only tickles the fancy and teases the palate, but satisfies all the way to the heart. So there you have it: cookie decorating isnt a frivolity to me. Its fun, for sure, but its also a passion that gives my life a strong sense of meaning.