As we speak, I am knee-deep in cookie prep. I haven't even counted how many varieties I intend to make. A tradition started by my grandmother, my family has always given cookie baskets as gifts to friends and neighbors. My husband was fairly horrified the first year we lived together and he saw the stacks upon stacks of plastic containers loaded with cookies! Here's the breakdown of recipients so you can understand the shear volume needed!
-a plate for my coworkers
-a plate for Brent's coworkers
-a holiday work party (offsite)
-a holiday work party (onsite)
-5 outside family members
-a handful of close friends, coworkers and neighbors deserving of my confections!
That adds up to a LOT of cookies people! Usually I have 10 or so varieties, almost all of those I end up making a double batch. Added to that is usually a batch of snack mix, jam, hot cocoa mix, a Russian tea mix, homemade chocolate dipped peppermint marshmallows, etc. Ahhhhh! But, I love it! I wouldn't have it any other way.
So, in the midst of my kiddo deciding that a temperature of 100 degrees the other day, I got an unexpected day off to get things rolling. This looks like a very controlled version of what really happened. You can't see the floor everywhere (mostly on me!)! This is 4 batches of cookies ready to roll. Seriously, it looks like a lot, but in 1 hour, I had everything prepped, tossed in the mixer, wrapped in plastic and popped in the fridge. The most work was washing out the mixer bowl between batches. The bonus is that every night I can come home from work and grab a bag of dough and whip out cookies easy peasy!
Every year we make gingerbread houses and normally I use graham crackers for the kiddos, but this year I found this cool cutter at Fancy Flours. Thank you mom and sis for the gift card to them! Apparently they know my weakness for all things kitcheny!
No, those aren't my houses. I did cut out all my pieces and baked them off a little longer than normal cookies since I want them nice and hard. No soft house pieces that will eventually collapse! I even added some crushed hard candies to the windows for a little fun.
Want a few recipes? Here's a few of my favorites:
Pictures of my gingerbread construction party coming this week, along with more recipes! Happy Holidays!!!!!
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