Every year since I was kid, my mother and I spent the beginning of our winter breaks baking Christmas cookies. From chocolate chip to rum balls to snickerdoodles and beyond, we make almost every kind of cookie there is. Then, we package them up in cookie tins and deliver them to our neighbors. Pro-tip if you want friendly neighbors: everybody likes Christmas cookies.
Two years ago, I got it in my head that I wanted to make gingerbread men. I spent countless hours searching the internet for the perfect recipe and finally I found it. I spent forever perfecting this recipe and finally I had it: the greatest gingerbread cookie recipe to ever exist. And then the fateful day finally came.
The day started out perfectly normal. My mother and I got up early, laid out all of our ingredients (they literally covered our kitchen counters), and got to baking. I made the most perfect gingerbread men you’ve ever seen and we affectionately deemed them “gingerbuddies”. They were gorgeously light brown, firm but still soft, with little squiggles of melt-in-your-mouth icing. I spent over an hour painstakingly drawing on each button and face. They were perfect.
But, here’s where our story takes a turn. You see, it was raining that day. And my mother and I were loath to get wet. So when there was a break in the clouds, we packed up about half of the tins, and went out into the neighborhood to deliver. Only about half of the gingerbread men’s icing had dried, so we left the other half on a piece of parchment paper on our kitchen table.
A half hour later, we returned home, as the skies had reopened up. We said hello to the dogs and walked into the kitchen. And what did we find? Not a single gingerbuddy. The parchment paper laid on the table, but no gingerbuddies in sight.
My mother and I stood there confused for several minutes, dripping water onto the tile, as the storm raged outside. We went into full detective mode. Maybe we had watched one too many episodes of Brooklyn 99, but we were suddenly crime scene investigators. Cue the black and white coloring, the cigarette smoke in the air, and the old Hollywood accents.
Our first thought was maybe we had already packed them into the remaining tins before we left, but when we went to investigate, none of the tins had gingerbuddies in them. We looked in the fridge, in the oven, everywhere we could think to find them. I mean, how hard is it to misplace 17 gingerbuddies?
I then went over to examine our evidence: the single piece of parchment left on the table. This is when I found our next clue. A small wet spot on the corner which certainly hadn’t been there before. My first gut reaction was that the gingerbuddies had melted (I really wish this was a joke). But after half a second of rational thinking, I realized that simply could not be the case.
I consulted my detective partner (my mother) and we decided there was only one suspect: my brother. My brother was 22 and home for Christmas from college and despite his dislike of gingerbread, who else could it be?
We brought him into the station (our kitchen) and questioned him (cue the dramatic music and single bright light in his face). But, there was no motive. He hated gingerbread and he had an alibi: he had been playing video games with his buddies the whole time. So, the search continued.
We needed someone with a motive. We needed someone with the time to commit the crime and stash any evidence. We needed someone without an alibi. And there was only one suspect left.
All eyes turned to Sage, my brother’s 6 month old border collie. She may have looked cute and innocent but there was a criminal hiding behind those eyes and still licking her lips too.
And thus, the great gingerbuddy disaster of 2021 was solved. We could never get her to admit it, but as far as we know, as soon as we left the house to deliver our cookies, Sage had jumped up on the table, eaten all 17 of the gingerbuddy cookies, and escaped. She would have gotten away with it too, if she hadn’t left the damning piece of evidence: the wet parchment paper.
For me and my mother, we celebrated the close of another successful case. As for Sage, she’s serving her time. She spends cookie baking day every year locked up (in her crate). But just between us, I slip her a gingerbuddy through the bars every year. Don’t tell my mother.