Dating : Cookie recipe

Dedicated to both my grandmothers, who are no longer with me. They were both strong and beautiful women who have inspired me to become a better person.

Summer holidays are the best. I used to spend them with my grandparents, observing those inspiring connoisseurs.

Undeniably, some afternoons can be dull, but my grandmother knew just the trick to turn it around.

“If you are bored then bake cookies”, she cheered.

Without much hassle she takes out a bowl and gracefully whips the sugar with the butter, whip, whip, whip. She wants to perfect the wet mixture. Her face not losing the concentration required to ensure the sugar crystals break and melt.

Then, she rejoices as she pours the mix up-and-down on a jolly ride to test its consistency, just as thick as honey and perfect for the flour to be added.

As she proficiently sifts the flour into the bowl it starts to look like it’s raining white powdery snow in the kitchen. Once that’s complete it’s on to the mixing and kneading. She puts up quite the fight for an innocent soft-natured lady. I thought her arm would be enduring as equal pain as that flour being battered.

Squish, flip, squish, she does not stop wrestling until the mixture is soft and doughy. The dough is so cute; she likes to make free-style dough models and play with her masterpiece before things get very serious and deadly.

Out comes the shiny-silver razor sharp shapifiers aka cookie cutters. She doesn’t like to waste any bit of dough. She makes large heart shaped ones first, for display, then she likes to make smaller funky cartoon-character shaped ones, that she saves just for us both.

“These are for us”, she used to tell me.

Once the preparation is complete, she rests them on her pink marble tabletop for a painful 30 minutes. These are times when she watches over her work like a hawk, from the prying eyes of us hungry snackers. She protects them until the time comes and then lets them into the oven. Into the oven they go.

She turns the heat up slightly more than indicated in the traditional recipe, to suit her presumptuously eager audience. “Thank you, Grandma!”

The cookies just sit there, silent and still, inside the burning hot oven, waiting to achieve that golden glow tan.

As the mesmerising sight of the slow-burning cookies distract me, the kitchen has become spotless, no sight of any of the white powder rain or the sharp shapifiers. She has just whizzed around the area and done a spotless full sweep.

What awes me the most is that despite all the fuss and hard work in the kitchen she does not lose the scent of her delicate perfume. A summer rose fragrance. I adore the way she eases herself in the porch with her favourite novel, in her cosy egg chair, without any heed or anxiety paid to the cookies that slowly bakes itself in the kitchen.