Assignment 1

Annual Intrieri Cookie Making

The one thing that my family gets right every year is also one of the most stressful annual events for some families. Now trust me, in the end, every year it is worth it, or at least, in my opinion, it’s worth it, but there’s never been a year where something hasn’t gone wrong.

Every year at the Intrieri’s residence in Mastic, New York there’s an event that takes place every year right around the second week of December and that event is Italian cookie making, even though some cookies aren’t completely Italian, the spirit is at least. In a house full of laughs and jokes, the sweet aroma of firewood from the countless candles that my stepmom has lit around our fake fireplace makes its way throughout the entire house. My two sisters Emily, Natalie, my father, my stepmom Gina, and I sit on the couch with our animals waiting for the inevitable to start and that is, baking cookies.

“So, when are you making cookies?” Gina asks my father, and those words start the hectic weekend that is instore for us. “right now,” so it was time for all hell to break loose. Usually, it is, Natalie, my father, and I who make the cookies, it’s always been that way since I can remember but, today everyone wanted to help which did not make it easier at all, meaning everyone would be in the kitchen and getting into everyone’s way. We were in for a real treat. To be more specific we make cookies along with chocolates that we then give out to friends and family in huge quantities and also still fill up five eighteen-inch tin cans filled to the brim with desserts along with plates upon plates of extra chocolates, so yeah, we make a lot of cookies. Each cookie is tedious and annoying for its own reason such as the Linzer tarts since you have to make the dough bake it then make the tart then wait for both of those to cool down then assemble then bake again which gets annoying in a large quantity. Now we have a consistent set of cookies that we make every year by adding one or two new ones but this time we made just the basics which include chocolate chip, Linzer tarts, almond crescents, coconut snowballs, coconut chocolate chips. Then there are the chocolates which are coconut chocolates, rice Krispy chocolate, and Rocky Road which for those who don’t know is marshmallows walnuts with chocolate drizzles on top of it to solidify it, oh and did I mention that we do a dark chocolate variant for each chocolate we make, with my personal favorite being the dark chocolate rocky road.

So finally, the time we’ve all been waiting for time to start measuring and taking the recipes out and every year the same question is asked “Which one means tablespoon, and which one means teaspoon?” to which I never know the answer to but luckily there’s google. The measuring alone takes around an hour for just the first batch of cookies and once the first ones go in then it’s cleaned up and starts with the next recipe. Like the tradition goes, there is always one ingredient that we don’t buy because we think there’s enough at the house and this year it was dark melting chocolate which is very different from regular chocolate. So, to that, we send the same group which is Emily and I which leaves to my dad and Natalie to continue baking since Gina already checked out and when we get back it’ll just be me who continues to bake, and Emily and Gina will start watching Elf as they always do.

At Michaels, we were tasked with getting three bags of dark melting chocolates and to no surprise, we got distracted. “Should we get one?” I say holding a gingerbread house set when I looked at the price and instantly said “I’m not paying forty dollars for this” and put it back. We then returned home with the chocolate and saves us the trip that we would’ve had to take tomorrow if we didn’t realize. Now as day one concludes we usually almost finish the cookies and by tomorrow we should either finish or be close to finishing since the whole process takes around two to three days.

Day two is underway, and we have more in store with another full day of baking from sunrise to sunset. We finally finish the cookies around noon and then go to get lunch, which is always TJ’s, so I hop in my 2011 Red paint chipping Nissan rouge aka the mom car, and go down the road to pick up everyone’s sandwich which takes around half an hour for a round trip but after were done eating it’s time to start the chocolates.

Natalie and I are tired, and our dad helps out but he mainly monitors so by now he takes over since the chocolates are the easiest to mess up but, it’s hard to get angry while were listening and singing Christmas songs and cracking dumb your mom jokes at each other with the occasional barking we get from our dog from us play fighting each other. Soon the time flies and we all begin to realize that this is the last batch so after we pop it in the oven that has been working nonstop for the past two days we begin cleaning and the kitchen which looks normal now without the mess of the baking ingredients in it.

As we sit with hot chocolate and coffee watching a random Christmas movie on our L-shaped couch the oven dings and with that relief, we put the final batch on a tray and begin to chill them and that would end these two hectic days of constant baking but oh it was so worth it, and I can’t wait for next year.