Best Cookie Tray Ever

I'm on a very tight prep time line right now - There are seven fishes on a menu for eleven tonight, and there are several process points that need to be covered before 10:00 AM. But before I rouse the landlocked fisherman to pick up the order under 'S' at Whole Foods, I've got a little time to write. Especially, since I've made it 90% of the way toward checking off the sweet part of the prep list.
 
As you might have read, throughout December I've been practicing the recipes and techniques that will make a very storied cookie tray for our first Christmas as husband and wife - one that encompasses a little bit of each side of our growing family.

Growing up, we became masters of Grandma F.'s recipes, and making her cookies was always the first item on our culinary checklist for Christmas. We would start on the 21st or 22nd and day by day, work our way through each of her handwritten recipes, storing them in tins when we were finished, creating a mountain of metal in the corner of our kitchen. On Christmas Eve, the nearly dozen varietals of Christmas cookie that geometrically filled every space on the big Lenox Christmas Tree platter brought the Midwest and my Dad's side of the family to our annual celebration in Pittsburgh.

That tray was the pride of us kids and was the one-man show on Christmas Eve. Each cookie would be lauded and celebrated for perfection that seemed to outdo itself each year. On Christmas Day though, our tray met two, three, and in more recent years, five or six other cookie trays that represented my Mom's side of the family and my other Grandma's recipes: Nut rolls, mint chip cookies topped with maraschino cherries, crescent cookies, apricot cake, and sandwich cookies. Christmas dessert was always a smorgasbord of miniature sweets that brought back the richest kind of memories. 
 
This year, I've been presented with a challenge - To recreate that smorgasbord in Naperville, without the Aunts who are so adept at covering the Barry territory, and then add two more sides of the family to the equation. (Good thing the Jurviches got me a three tiered cookie tray.) The solutions though. Practice. And recruiting help.

Practice - check. Help - it came. My sister and parents arrived in Naperville yesterday, and together we baked the afternoon away in a kitchen that both Grandmas would have been at home in.

Simultaneously, in two other kitchens, more help. Peter's Mom was making her memorable recipes, and Peter's Oma was making her German specialties - cookies that I've been known to eat four or five of. The result this evening will be the sweetest cookie tray ever.

(My sister wanted me to show that I did end of screwing up some of the nut rolls. She referred to these as turds.)

As a marketer, I know the value of sampling though. So yesterday evening, I used Facebook and one of the best parties of the year as ways to get some initial feedback. I posted a photo of the Hello Dollies to stir some sentiment and my cousins started a dialogue about twenty comments deep about their favorite Grandma cookies and which ones they were each contributing to create their own storied Christmas trays this year. Then I took a plate to Cousin Bob's house for dinner - legend from Jeanne is that his favorite are date bars ... but he never gave me the thumbs up last night. Bob? Waiting ...

To the fishes ...
Lo.