‘Tis The Season: Authors Talk Holidays is a special seasonal feature on Pop! Goes The Reader in which some of my favourite authors help me to celebrate the spirit of the season and spread a little holiday cheer. So, pour yourself a cup of hot chocolate and snuggle in by the fireside as they answer the question: “What does the holiday season mean to you?”
About Alechia Dow
Alechia Dow is a former pastry chef, food critic, culinary teacher, and Youth Services librarian. When not writing YA sci-fi featuring determined Black girls (like herself), you can find her having epic dance parties with her daughter, baking, mentoring, or taking teeny adventures around Europe.
The holidays are both a magical and difficult time of year for me.
My fondest memories involve bright Christmas trees, loaded with handmade ornaments from my sister and I, hers were always more artfully made than mine – I had issues with putting too much glue on things, resulting in mismatched fragments – and my mom’s topper passed down from her father. It’s really important to note here that we were a step above dirt poor. Throughout the year, we didn’t ask for things because we couldn’t afford them. Most of our meals came from the local food bank, we were lucky to have heat and hot water (though sometimes we went without, even though we lived in Massachusetts). I wore Salvation Army castoffs, and for whatever reason, most of those castoffs that fit me (because I’ve always been plus size) had to have been from a middle-aged cat lady. We’re talking long pink sweater tunics with cats on them and black stirrup leggings. The kind of clothes kids pick on you mercilessly for wearing at school.
Annnnnyway, that’s important to note because Christmas mornings were the opposite of the rest of the year. Underneath the tree would be filled with beautifully wrapped gifts my mom had been buying all year and hiding in some secret place. If we closed one eye, we could almost pretend we were in a fairytale. That Santa really existed and rewarded us for surviving the year with oodles of gifts.
But we didn’t have the luxury of believing in that sort of thing. We knew the truth; my mom made it magical for us. She wanted us to forget our hardships, and so Christmas was an extravaganza of sweets, Barbie mansions, and soft, cozy sweaters for kids procured from the local Dress Barn (not even kidding, very Schitt’s Creek, right?).
After the gifts, the grateful tears, and carefully tossing the piles of wrapping paper in a garbage bag to get rid of the evidence that poor folks can have days of splendor, she would make a honey roasted ham with mashed potatoes and green beans. I was in charge of the sweets, even early on.
It was a talent to take little bits of food bank ingredients and make something you could find in a bakery. I became very talented at cookies. My peanut butter cookies were just the right amount of chewy and gooey. My chocolate chip cookies required a glass of cold milk to wash down all that salty goodness, because yes, even back then, I knew a bit of salt could make your cookie extraordinary. But my molasses cookies? They were so quintessentially New England, full of spice and flavor, that our neighbors would request them. Years later, after my Mom passed, our family went separate ways no longer bound together by her glue (my glue was always too much, resulting in disastrously ugly items hobbled together that never quite fit and I refused to do that to my remaining family), I still think of these precious moments when I bake molasses cookies.
I’m the maker of magical Christmas mornings now for my own little family. Though I will never do it as well as she did, she’s in every tradition I carried across the Atlantic with me to Germany. She’s alive in the sparkling lights and my daughter’s handmade ornaments (using just the right amount of glue, thank goodness). She’s the extra spice in the molasses cookies.
And so, I’m sharing my recipe with you. I hope they make you feel warm, loved, and just a bit spoiled, the way she made me feel. I hope they make you believe in magic.
Chewy Molasses Cookies
Ingredients:
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
1 ½ teaspoons ginger
½ teaspoon cloves
¼ teaspoon allspice
1 ½ sticks butter
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup sugar for dipping
Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees, and line two sheet pans with parchment paper
2. Whisk flour, baking soda, salt, and spices in a bowl, and set aside.
3. Beat butter with brown and granulated sugar at medium high speed for 3 minutes with hand mixer or stand mixer.
4. Add yolk and vanilla, and continue mixing for 20 seconds.
5. Add molasses and mix for another 20 seconds.
6. Reduce speed to lowest setting and add flour mixture and beat until just incorporated.
7. Using a Tablespoon measure, scoop a heap of dough into your hands, and form a ball (1 ½-inch ball). Drop in bowl of the ½ cup sugar. Roll the ball around to coat it with sugar.
8. Repeat these steps with the remaining dough.
9. Bake 1 sheet at a time, the cookies should be spaced 2 inches apart.
10. Cookies will look browned and puffy, but the centers should look underdone (11 minutes about, but I find they tend to be done within 9-10 minutes with my oven).
11. Cool cookies on baking sheet and Enjoy!
Title The Sound of Stars
Author Alechia Dow
Intended Target Audience Young Adult
Publication Date February 25th 2020 by Inkyard Press
Find It On Goodreads ● Amazon ● Chapters ● The Book Depository ● Barnes & Noble ● IndieBound
Can a girl who risks her life for books and an alien who loves pop music work together to save humanity? A beautiful and thrilling debut novel for fans of Marie Lu and Veronica Roth.
Two years ago, a misunderstanding between the leaders of Earth and the invading Ilori resulted in the deaths of one-third of the world’s population.
Today, seventeen-year-old Ellie Baker survives in an Ilori-controlled center in New York City. With humans deemed dangerously volatile because of their initial reaction to the invasion, emotional expression can be grounds for execution. Music, art and books are illegal, but Ellie still keeps a secret library.
When young Ilori commander M0Rr1S finds Ellie’s library, he’s duty-bound to deliver her for execution. The trouble is, he finds himself drawn to human music and in desperate need of more.
Humanity’s fate rests in the hands of an alien Ellie should fear, but M0Rr1S has a potential solution ― thousands of miles away. The two embark on a wild and dangerous journey with a bag of books and their favorite albums, all the while creating a story and a song of their own that just might save them both.
