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The best Christmas food around

ESCANABA -- The Christmas challenge has begun.

Award-winning cookies, coffee cakes, rosettes, divinity and gingerbread are being created all across the U.P.

It certainly is a sweet time of the year. Traditional and ethnic treats stir up a lot of good memories.

My family, like so many others, joins in the fun of Christmas cooking and baking. All I have to do is just mention my Aunt Nancy Hendrickson's homemade Swedish rye bread and mouths start to water.

She also made those wonderful wafer-thin, fried, golden-brown and coated with powdered sugar, rosette cookies. Then she shared them with the whole family.

My mother baked billions of cut-out sugar cookies. Us kids, all gathered around the kitchen table, helped with the decorating. Icing of red, green, blue, white and even black (for Santa's boots) filled little bowls on the table.

A wide selection of candy sprinkles, colored sugars and chocolate jimmies made dazzling stars, bright bells, smiley Santa's and shaggy camels.

We made so many sugar cookies that after giving some to aunties, school teachers, neighbors and bus drivers, Mom sold several dozens.

Aunt Rita's "buckeyes" (peanut butter candies) and mounds bars were a crowd pleaser for all of us chocoholics.

Then there are main dish holiday favorite's foods. Nan did meat pies, Mom and our crew stuffed potato sausage and the Verbrigghe's made Belgian sausage.

Over the years, we have even got a little crazy and competitive about our culinary delights. We've had contests.

Who makes the best Rice Crispy bars? My brother Mark, no doubt. With his special ingredient almond extract, he won the prize.

One year a heated family discussion raised the question who makes the best homemade donuts?

The challenge went out to the best fried donut creators. My Aunt Sandy had years of experience behind her. My Aunt Nancy worked wonders with yeast doughs. But it was my younger cousin Joe Verbrigghe Jr. that won the competition hands down. He was voted the best donut maker in the family.

It's time to get down Grandma's old recipe book. Rummage through those faded recipe cards. Cook up some fun festive foods with your family.

The judging begins soon on the best spritz cookie, fruit cake, dinner rolls, fudge and so much more. Bon appetit.

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Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.