Jenny Casson’s Festive Holiday Treats

Some thoughts from Jenny Casson, our sponsored Olympic athlete, on the holiday season …

Baking Christmas cookies and treats and delivering them to friends and family is a holiday tradition in our household.  As the house fills with scents of nutmeg, cinnamon and oh, so much butter, you know that the season has officially begun. Our family believes pouring your time and attention into baking for loved ones truly captures the spirit of the season. From the preparation to the delivery, blasting those classic holiday tunes and making a mess of your kitchen in the name of Christmas is a wonderful way to get together and greet the season.

For Mom and me, we have four annual favourite recipes that we stick too. First, we stick to the classics of gingerbread and shortbread. Those are a “can’t go without” staple in this house. Second, we use egg-whites, cornflakes, coconut and chocolate chips to make macaroons and chow mein, melted chocolate and butterscotch chips and peanuts to form our family favourite “chocolate clusters”. Those rarely make it out for delivery. To this day I remain unsure whether these treats are truly the best in the world, or whether the annual reoccurrence and comforting guarantee that candy cane-shaped shortbread and snowball shaped macaroons will greet our family dessert table again. As we make somewhere close to a million (give or take five) and deliver them to our nearest and dearest, the holiday season cannot truly begin in our house until flour has wreaked havoc on our kitchen tables and about 25 pounds of butter and 44 eggs have been transformed into heavenly delights.

Although the whole “deliver them to the nearest and dearest” part sometimes requires another couple of hours in the kitchen, sometimes a “little mouse” has gone in and taken their fair share into storage … creating a fun presentation and seeing your closest family and friends smile genuinely upon delivery gives you all the uplifting Christmas spirit you will need to make it until the next season. Those smiles and thank-you’s will fill your love tank for the next 12 months, until you can do it all over again.

Merry Christmas to all and may you eat too many cookies.