12 Days

With 12 days left until Christmas, I thought it was time for a couple of Christmas projects. I told the girls that if they did their chores really well this morning, we’d have time to do some fun things in the afternoon. And lo, they cleaned up! An early Christmas miracle.

 

This is stage one of our first project. I will have to finish stage two later – when there are less kids jumping around. Can you guess what they are?

 

Then, on to cookies! We decided on Gingersnaps today.

 

Diligently rolling the dough balls in sugar.

 

But ready to pause for a photo-op.

 

Or a little goofing off.

 

There was a lot of “tasting” throughout the process.

 

The finished product! Some of them anyway. It wouldn’t be Christmas baking if we didn’t at least double the recipe, right?

It turned out to be a productive afternoon. Hope your preparations are going well, too!

Samoas!

Since it’s Girl Scout Cookie season, I’ve seen a lot of tasty homemade cookie recipes on Pinterest. I decided to try one.

 

I liked the idea of making them as bars to save time, but I wanted to see what would happen if I tried making them in muffin tins. I figured it would be a little faster than rolling and cutting the shortbread dough, and would keep all the layers nice and tidy. So that’s what I did.

 

I pressed the cookie dough into the tins and baked them. I used two muffin pans for a total of twenty-four cookies, but they came out a little thick. I think I’d try to spread it out more next time, or halve the recipe.

 

While the dough was cooling, I toasted the coconut and made up this caramel sauce to use in place of the caramel candies. I halved the recipe, which was good because I burned the first batch. Yuck. If you try it this way, be sure to keep a close eye on the stove , keep the heat on the lower side, and stir almost constantly. Burned sweetened condensed milk smells nasty.

After mixing the coconut and caramel, I pressed the topping into the tins on top of the cookie. It seemed at first like it didn’t want to stick to the cookie, but they stayed together pretty well once they set.

 

Then it was time for chocolate. I melted some chocolate chips and started dipping.

 

The chocolate tended to form a thick layer on the bottom, so I scraped each one against the side of the bowl as I dipped them. It worked pretty well.

 

Then I drizzled a little chocolate over the tops, and stuck them in the fridge for the chocolate to set. Not the prettiest cookies out there, but they sure tasted good.

You can see that little guy on the left has an extra chocolate layer between the cookie and coconut. That’s because he came apart when I pulled him out of the tin, and I had to glue him back together. I saved him. Then I ate him.

So while I like how the muffin pans worked out, they were definitely on the thick side. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I may try to get them a little thinner next time.

These cookies freeze really well, which makes it easy to pull out just a few at a time. Just be prepared for some chocolate beards and mustaches if you feed them to kids.

Cookies!

One of the projects that kept Paul and Veronica busy last week was a super batch of butter cookies. It happened in stages, making up the giant bowl of dough one day, then rolling, cutting and baking the next. Finally it was time to decorate!

 

Veronica was in charge of sprinkles, which was fine by her.

 

Jacinta got to “decorate” a cookie. Which meant licking the frosting off and starting over again. And again.

 

All the sprinkles have to be sampled, right?

 

Done! Didn’t I say it was a super batch?

 

Along with the more traditional Christmas shapes, Veronica picked out a few others that she liked. Thank you to Deb and Clint for the timely gift of fun cookie cutters, without which this cookie would not have been possible.

 

Nor this one. Dinosaurs are popular in our house.

 

This fish was the cookie that Veronica picked out to eat first. She took a few bites then set it aside to “save for later”. She still hasn’t finished it. Girl just doesn’t have a sweet tooth.

 

Jacinta, on the other hand…

 

A fun Christmas baking project. Now what to make next?

Christmas Baking

One of my favorite things about the holidays is all the tasty food that goes along with them. From Thanksgiving until New Year’s there is no lack of edibles, no matter what your taste is. And a sure way to tell that Christmas is approaching is the heavenly smell of something in the oven, that staple of Christmas fare – Christmas cookies!

 

This year I decided that Veronica was old enough to give me hand.

 

No, the smiles on our faces aren’t because of the six pack of beer that I neglected to move off of the counter. You can see they’ve all still got their caps on. *Hic*

 

 

Operating the sprinkles was the job of choice.

 

And she was good at it!

 

A little too good. How do you dispose of excess sprinkles?

 

Eat them of course!

 

Yum!

 

Jacinta helped by sitting and being cute. She was good at her job, too.

 

It’s always been a tradition in our family to bake butter cookies for Christmas, so it was fun to share with my daughter. Just like my mom did with me and my siblings, and her mom before that. And while it makes me miss my grandmother a lot, it’s nice to know that a part of her still lives on with us when we continue to share holiday traditions like this one.

Happy Baking, everyone!