Cookies - luscious cookies: one of the wonderful treats of Christmas season! I've been baking a lot the past couple weeks and I'm always a little amazed by the magic of creating cookies. For most of my living I was not much of a baker; a good 'dump and pour' cook yes, baking however requires following directions, accurate measurement and patience - it is not a dump and pour process.
The patience needed for baking is what tripped me up: learning to cream butter and sugar thoroughly, learning to add the ingredients in order; mixing each addition carefully so they were fully combined: united into a new substance. Baking requires awareness and attention.
The foundation for good cookies lies in the creaming of butter and sugar: mixing these two very different ingredients until they are totally absorbed into one another and become a fluffy pool able to cheerfully accept the "hardness" of the flour binding the sweet buttery goodness into the cookie that will make your mouth smile.
I disliked the time it took for butter and sugar to be completely absorbed into one another: I'd dump the two together and then, for what seemed like a ridiculous amount of time, whir the beaters over and over through the lumpy butter and grainy sugar: fluffy took a long time to achieve. One day not so long ago I was reading something about baking and it said: "when creaming butter and sugar, first cream the butter alone so it opens and more readily receives the sugar."
Wow - a new idea. New idea that really works and, as I've discovered, not only decreases the combining of the two substances into half the time, the combining is much more complete and the fluffiness is lovely: my enjoyment of cookie making took a giant leap forward.
Yesterday as I creamed butter into a pool of softened goodness, preparing it to receiving the sugar, it hit me that combining butter and sugar in this new way was similar to another discovery that came into my life.
A little over a decade ago I read a line that changed my way of perceiving life and living: "All God asks is that you be open to seeing and receiving the one hundred blessings placed in your life each day." One HUNDRED blessings every day gifted to me !! The number seemed huge, how could this be? Oh, my head could grasp the concept, but feeling the experience of receiving as I went through the day was a little elusive until one day, my spirit seemed to open in a new way.
My heart is like butter that generally needs to sit and soften before it is ready to be mixed and opened into receiving the sugar. Getting up and having my first action of the day be to take some time to just sit in stillness and bring my self into the presence of God is the first step toward softening. As I then begin my prayers of gratitude, I feel my softened heart expanding beyond my little self and opening my Being to the immensity of God's love and blessings.
Blessings are the sugar of life. Just as I've discovered that creaming butter and sugar is much, much easier if the butter is first softened and creamed, so too are blessings more easily recognized and received throughout the day if my heart has first been opened and expanded.
Oh, and that fluffy pool of sweet goodness resulting from butter and sugar thoroughly creamed? That in now my self ready to receive the ingredients of living. I've discovered that I take bit of time to pause every now during the day, and say thank you for the blessings, well, it seems as though Love then bakes the day into a tasty cookie making my heart smile.
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