It’s mid-December somewhere on the near northwest side of Chicago. The kitchen is heady with cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and fresh citrus zest, which earlier my husband and I warmed with honey and butter into a gorgeous syrup. The counter is laden with spice jars, measuring cups, bowls, and sheet pans—creating a disorderly frame around four brown dough mounds.
A 3-by-5-inch note card, titled “Mushroom Cookies (Lithuanian Grybai),” presides over the whole chaotic affair, handwritten in slanted blue cursive and stained from decades of use. We’ve reached the card’s second side, when the script gets smaller and more crammed as it guides us through the shaping, baking, icing, and assembly of these time-consuming little monsters.