12 Days of Chrismas: DAY FOUR - Mom's Christmas Treat Box

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, my Mom heard my brothers discussing how they can tell each year that the Christmas season has arrived. One brother said the first sign of Christmas was caramels. The other said it was a cheese ball. I would have argued for shortbread. But most years all of these arrive at the same time as a love gift from my mother.

Like the Cheesy French Toast, many of the Christmas treats my mother creates were a tradition handed down from her mother. My Grandma Sarah was trained as a candy maker as a young woman, and caramels were one of the candies she learned to make skillfully, along with various types of hand-dipped chocolates and sweet nougat with crushed almonds.

The cheese ball recipe also came from my Grandma Sarah. It includes Kraft Roca Blue and Old English Sharp cheese spread, cream cheese, Worchestershire sauce, and spices, all mixed together, rolled into a ball, and then covered with chopped pecans.

In my childhood, the cheese ball sometimes didn't appear until the family fish fry party on New Year's Day, but these days my Mom makes a few for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and if you are lucky enough to be one of the kids who lives close by, you'll get a cheese ball in your Christmas treat box. In my opinion, the cheese ball is best eaten with Triscuits, but it goes well with any cracker, like Wheat Thins or Ritz. The Kraft cheese spreads are getting more expensive and more difficult to find, so when I see some jars at the store, I phone my Mom and we talk about the price and how many to buy to stock up for the next season. Yes, we are cheese spread hoarders in our family.

The shortbread is a Scottish tradition--my Grandma Sarah's father was born in Scotland. You can buy scotch shortbread in boxes at the store (they are in the plaid box). The store-bought kind is OK, but it tends to be hard. The real way to have shortbread is homemade, with real butter and only the minimal amount of flour so it doesn't turn tough. Grandma Sarah taught my Mom to make shortbread in big round cakes, which they then broke up into smaller pieces. My Mom taught my sister-in-law J. (wife of my sons' uncle T.) to make shortbread that way, and J. and her daughter C. still make those big cakes together during the Christmas season. In recent years my Mom makes her shortbread with a cookie cutter to create perfectly shaped little shortbread cookies.

p.s. Note added 3 Jan 2012: If you've ever had cookies made from Grandma Sarah's shortbread recipe, you'll know they are a real treat. My Mom saved a precious few for this year's New Year's party. My cousin J. was thrilled to see them and it's very likely she didn't want to share. :)

Mom's Christmas gift box now includes a tall bag of Lindor Chocolate balls.

This tradition started a few years ago while my sister Joni and her family were living at Mom's house. Mom found a good deal on Lindor chocolate that year, and so she bought some during December. After that, Joni's kids always associated those Lindor balls with Christmas, so Mom sends them out to all the kids now. This year I am staying away from chocolate (I think I may be allergic to it like my Dad and sister Pookie), so my son E. and husband Randalf have had to negotiate over the Lindor balls. The milk chocolate ones were gone within a couple of days (thus there are no red balls in the photo above); E., who usually doesn't eat many treats, had snarfed them down before we knew what happened. E. then moved on to the white chocolate balls. He took mental possession of them and, unbeknownst to me, was keeping a count of how many were left. I was writing a blog late the other night when E. came home from work and I could hear him down in the kitchen saying, "Who is eating the white chocolate balls?! There were 5 this morning, and now there are only 3!" Unbeknownst to him, I had packed the missing 2 white chocolate balls in his lunch for the next day. :)

My Mom tells me that the Lindor chocolate balls are not the only treats that the grandkids seek to take possession of. Joni's son N. takes ownership of the caramels in their house. They are such a favorite with him that he asked Mom to help him make a batch during their last summertime visit. Mom also made a non-seasonal batch to take to Joni's family when she visited them this past summer. She packed the caramels in an outside pocket of her suitcase, which proved to be a bit of a problem when her layover in Minneapolis unexpectedly stretched to 6 hours. Mom enjoyed the air conditioning of the airport, but the caramels melted in the suitcase out on the tarmac. Fortunately, they were in a ziplock bag so the suitcase was fine. When she got to Joni's house in Wisconsin, she put the caramels in the freezer for a while, and they turned out OK. The kids had to struggle a bit to get the waxed wrapping off of the candy, but they didn't mind. The taste of Christmas had arrived a few months early, and who's going to turn that down?

Oh. I forgot to mention the Gingerbread! The treat box from Grandma these days also includes tiny little gingerbread men and trees and other Christmas shapes, decorated with white frosting and sometimes little sprinkles. This year's batch are, in my opinion, the best ever.

They are soft, but not too soft, and they remind me of the decadent taste of cookie dough. Mom told me her secret: she had some extra cream cheese, so she put cream cheese in one of the batches of frosting. When the gingerbread men are covered with this frosting and packed in an airtight container, they stay soft and moist. She didn't think the cream cheese would hold up well in shipping, so the batches sent out of state included the traditional frosting, which I am sure are good, but Yum!, those cream cheese ones are amazing!

I have more food traditions from my Mom to share, but those will wait for another day. ... This is already getting way too long for anyone who isn't a grandchild of Grandma Sarah or a receiver of Mom's Christmas Treat Box (and even some of you dropped out 5 minutes ago).

Share Your Story
What's your favorite thing in Mom's treat box or that Grandma Sarah made for the holidays? What does your Mom or Grandma make for you that is a sign of Christmas?