Today, on December 30, 2025, I frosted my last batch of pfefferneusse for the year. I baked them yesterday right before a guest arrived for tea and cookies (I served her previously baked and frosted cookies). Today’s cookies are sitting in a heated kitchen and I am hoping that the icing will set because I will be mailing out cookies tomorrow morning on the last day of the year. Perhaps some of them will arrive by “old Christmas” on January 6th.

Before I got to the pfefferneusse, I spent yesterday morning rolling and cutting ginger cookies with the usual kinds of trouble, including dough that stuck to my marble slab and cut cookies that wrinkled when I tried to pick them up with a spatula. I was working in an utterly cold kitchen — about 40 F — to minimize difficulties from warming dough.

As I began rolling out the last fresh batch of the last dough, a miracle happened: the dough did not stick to the slab, I could roll it paper-thin and, for the first time in eight days, the cookie cutters lifted the dough rather than leaving it cut in place. Hallelujah. The perfect amount of flour, the perfect room temperature, the drier weather — whatever it was — allowed me to cut out three trays of fresh cookies and do the re-rolling to finish the ginger dough. Whew.

I enjoyed cutting those last batches of cookies. I was on a roll, using up open bowls of lime green and red sugars, ferrying trays to the oven.

I was working on parchment paper and, when I attempted to remove the last baking sheet one-handed, the sheet of parchment slid off the baking sheet. The cookies fell to the oven floor and began turning to charcoal and the edge of the parchment paper burst into flame. I picked it up, dropped it in the sink and splashed dishwater on the burning paper.

My house had smelled lovely, scented with freshly-baked ginger cookies and sugar. Now it smelled like burnt offerings.

I discovered that I cannot reach the lock on the window over the sink — I should add a one-step step-stool to my kitchen equipment, so I pivoted and opened another window. My smoke alarm, which goes off when I fry bacon, remained silent through the entire episode.

With half an hour to go before company, I reduced the oven temperature to 300 F, rolled the pfefferneusse dough into balls and baked them, after scraping black carbon off the oven floor. I began the kitchen clean-up, thinking I was done, when I spotted a small tray of ginger-re-rolls.

Drat. When the pfefferneusse came out in twenty minutes, I cranked the oven back up to 375 F and baked the last ginger cookies of 2025.

This morning I located enough boxes to mail cookies in, found a few boxes and tins that would fit inside them and decided to sacrifice a few tins from my permanent collection to send to some friends. I will get them packed today or tonight and be ready to walk them to the post office tomorrow when it opens.

Next year: start earlier. Maybe collect some new small Christmas tins this week if I can find any.