Cookie Day

One of my favorite parts of the Christmas holiday is baking Christmas cookies. I think I enjoy it because I don't have to eat them all! I can make oodles and oodles of cookies and I don't have to worry about them going to waste. I enjoy perusing the cookbooks and magazines and searching for just the right combination of recipes. I do all kinds of planning and organizing, and then my mom comes and wants to make even more! I had planned to make 8 kinds of cookies. She added peanut brittle, almond bark, and 5 others kinds of cookies! Not even kidding!

I have a few basic ideas when it comes to baking:

1. Butter, and only butter, unless it is lard. And Randy refuses to eat anything made with lard, so butter it is.
2. Recipes are only suggestions. Guidelines, if you will. If I think it will be better another way, I'll do it that way. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's all about the fun!
3. I love to try new recipes! And I don't feel the need to "test" them in advance. That takes away from the fun! It's an adventure! This year I made recipes I had never made before. Some were really good, others, not so much. But I didn't burn a single cookie! Some weren't very pretty, so just saved those for us!

This year I had planned to make most of the cookies in one day. We made some for church to go to our homebound members, some for the food pantry, some for friends and neighbors, and some for Justin's therapy office. And I have one freaky friend who cannot have chocolate or nuts, and that always adds a challenge. (Really, can you bake cookies without chocolate or nuts?? Not easily!) In the end I figured that there were only 2 kinds that wouldn't kill him. So we made some more for him.

We pre-made a couple of the doughs the night before, but everything else we did yesterday. We began at about 8 am and we pulled the last batch out of the oven at 5 pm. Not too bad with 2 boys, one of whom decided he just wanted to be held all....day...long. Fortunately it was the lighter one!

Travis has turned into quite a cook! He pulls out his apron when he wants to help and he can crack eggs without shells, most of the time, he can measure dry ingredients (both cups and teaspoons) and he mixes straight and doesn't tip the beater and spray all over the walls. I am very proud of him!

This is Justin helping. Giving mommy a break and licking a spoon. He likes it!

And he wants to share!

Travis enjoyed decorating the gingerbread men. He might have overdone some of the sugar...


He likes making towers too.

This is the spread at the end of the day. I set up an extra table in the entry way to put all the cookies as they cooled. We had more cookies than containers! We made: ginger lemon pinwheels, gingerbread people, cranberry macadamia cookies, caramel stuffed cookies, toffee pecan chocolate chip cookies, cherry cookie cups, Christmas cake cookies, raz-ma-taz brownies, raspberry cream cheese brownies, 4 kinds of refrigerator cookies, cherry winks, peppermint meltaways, and haystacks. Randy said that we weren't allowed to make any more cookies beyond the 30 dozen we had already made. I scoffed and said that we hadn't made 30 dozen! That was crazy! Yeah, then I added them up. I hadn't made 30 dozen. It was closer to 40 dozen. 475 to be exact. Not counting the ones we taste-tested.