In the Kitchen With Ann Curry

Family feuds softened with sugar cookies

Six months after Ann Curry wiggled her way into Meredith Vieira’s vacated seat as co-host of “The Today Show,” she was summarily pushed out. Her brief ascension to the role she had been coveting her entire career was fraught; as Brian Stelter wrote in his 2013 book Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV, Curry replaced Vieira. Vieira and Matt Lauer, her smarmy, shiny cohost with the itinerant charm of a traveling salesman, had a warm rapport that played well on camera. Curry and Lauer lacked that magic. The decision to remove Curry was carefully constructed: a three-pronged approach meant to ensure that Lauer would extend his contract and that Savannah Guthrie would rise to the occasion to fill the spot Curry had left. And so, after “Operation: Bambi” played out in full, Curry was out, in order to save Lauer and ostensibly the legacy of the “Today Show,” blaming tanking ratings on the lack of chemistry between the two and not the stale, stagnant approach to morning show fluff.

In a very uncomfortable five minutes of live television, Curry announced to the world that she was leaving the show, through tears, surrounded by Lauer, Savannah Guthrie and a pre-weight loss Al Roker. Watching it is painful; for anyone who’s ever been fired and forced to sit in a room of people arranging their faces in a rough approximation of sympathy, you will understand more than the rest of us. Walking into a room with other people waiting to let you go from your job is hard enough; having to accept that with dignity on national television while wearing a bright red dress and a lot of makeup is another thing entirely.

One of Ann Curry’s many obligations while on the staff of “The Today Show” was a contribution to their cookbook, “Today’s Kitchen Cookbook.” Following the same pattern as other cookbooks spawned from morning television, the recipes collected within are from a wide range of celebrities and chefs. Sharon Osbourne’s Shepard’s Pie features a rosemary mash; Suzanne Somers’ Rock Shrimp with citrus-serrano vinaigrette is accompanied with grainy screenshots of her in a leather blazer and a white button-down with aggressive French cuffs, cooking alongside Katie Couric. Maya Angelou’s potato salad features relish and hard-boiled eggs and sits next to a recipe for Curtis Aikens’s collard greens.

Celebrity chefs rather than actual celebrities make up the bulk of this book. But because the Today Show is a family — or at least they were, sort of, in 2005, when this book was published — each of the hosts at the time submitted a recipe, as well as their answers to a benign Q&A, wherein I learned that Al Roker eats a spoonful of peanut butter and a slice of whole wheat toast for breakfast and not much else.

If you desire, you can make Katie Couric’s lemon chicken, Al Roker’s chili or Matt Lauer’s pasta with broccoli rabe and sausage. I opted for Ann Curry’s sugar cookies, because I usually make sugar cookies from the squeezy tubes of dough, if at all. A sugar cookie is boring. It’s nothing more than a vehicle for icing that is too sweet. A PR company that used to love sending me bad chick lit at one of my old jobs would also send sugar cookies, usually in the shape of a handbag or a high heel. They were dry, and covered in a thick, tooth-chipping icing, the taste of which clung to the roof of my mouth.

I made Ann’s sugar cookies with the assistance of my four sisters, in a terrifically foul mood one Sunday, immediately following a very dumb fight about a Vitamix and its intended purpose. I outsourced the making of the royal icing to one of my sisters, but we all collaborated on the color. We were aiming for “dusty rose” but ended up with an iteration of “millennial pink.” Still salty from the Vitamix fight, I decorated a few with frowny-faces, but made one with each of our initials, too. They were a bit dry and slightly overdone, but I didn’t mind.

Ann’s Sugar Cookies

3/4 cup [1 1/2 sticks] softened, unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon grated orange peel(I used a lemon and I think it was better)
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

Cream together butter and sugar. Add egg, vanilla and orange peel. Beat together. Add flour and salt. Roll out to a quarter-inch thickness. Cut into shapes on ungreased cooking sheet. Bake at 350ºF for 10 minutes, makes about 2 dozen 2 1/2 inch cookies.

For Royal Icing

3 egg whites
1 pound confectioner’s sugar [1 box]
Food coloring

Mix together egg whites and confectioner’s sugar. Use food coloring if desired. Put icing on cooled cookies. The icing will harden, so if you want to add sprinkles or other decorations, do it immediately.