Emergency holiday cookies

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It may seem like summer vacation is barely over to you, but to your kids, it’s already time to put on Halloween costumes and decorate the house. I even heard my younger daughter humming Christmas carols a few days ago. (At least my horror-stricken expression, when they dangled fake spiders in my face, was genuine.) For times like these, an all-purpose sugar cookie recipe can work almost as well as Prozac. A basket full of various cookie cutters helps a lot too. The kids can mix and roll out the dough, then cut it out in seasonally appropriate shapes. We used letter cookie-cutters to spell ‘Halloween’ and a handy wolf-shaped cutter for a werewolf. If you pick up the cutters whenever you find them on sale, you’ll have a pile that can work for any ad hoc cookie occasion. (We baked sugar cookies in the shapes of donkeys and elephants for the last election.) Another good idea is to make double the dough and freeze the extra for those holidays that really catch you off guard. Labor Day, say. Or the Imaginary Friend’s sudden birthday.

-- Amy Scattergood