Christmas Cookies

A couple of years ago I was feeling strapped around Christmastime and I started baking assortments of cookies as presents instead of buying gifts. 

This year was a particularly strapping one for our family, what with the new baby and the medical bills and whatnot, and so it was cookie time again. 

I went through my collection of Christmas cookie magazines which I seem to buy every year and chose the ones that looked the most fun to bake. 

I settled on the Martha Stewart holiday cookie guide from 2010, chose 6 things that looked delicious, made 3 of them and ended up with the 5 delectable comestibles below as well as a batch of caramel corn.

Starting from high noon in the photo, I made marshmallows and cut them into graham cracker-quarter-sized pieces and made a s'more-like cookie sandwich with melted chocolate and peanuts. Then I took the remainder of the marshmallows and dipped them in the remainder of the chocolate. Down there at 4:00 there are chocolate peppermint cookies. The recipe calls for dipping the cookie entirely in the chocolate twice to give it a smooth finish. but I just spread melted white chocolate on the top and then dipped them into a bowl of candy cane bits.

At 7:00 in the photo we have glazed lemon cookies from Martha's website. The other flavors were all pretty dark, so I thought that a little citrus would brighten up the mix. I followed the recipe for the first batch, she says to drop globs of dough like a chocolate chip cookie, but the dough was pretty tight and they didn't spread at all.

So I rolled out the dough and cut out circles with a glass. Then I double dipped them in the glaze (which I opted to omit the lemon zest from because I thought the cookie would look nicer with a smooth finish) and let them stand to cool.

I think I would have been better served to put those in the fridge, they took a long time to set up.

The last sweet treat was a cocoa spice cake. It was intended to be bars, but my 9" x 9" pan was occupied at the time I needed it, so I baked a round cake and cut it into wedges. There is a lot of flavor packed into that little wedge, and I think it would be for the best if anyone concerned drank a cup of coffee while sampling that particular treat.

There weren't many left after I packed up the boxes, just a few of each for us to dig into here.

It's always a little scary trusting new recipes for gift-giving, but these all came out quite well.

I hope your Christmas day was full of family and fun, ours was a good one. 

See you soon

Jess