Christmas Baking

I'm surprised I got a picture of any of these cookies.... they're disappearing quickly from the freezer (I learned at a young age that if you aquire a taste for frozen goodies, no one realizes you've polished off a whole container of butter tarts until it's too late.)

We have made an assortment of Christmas cookies so far this year, and I have a batch of cream puffs in the oven right now. (I'll post those tomorrow!)

We made (and decorated) Sugar Cookies, using this recipe that my friend Loree suggested. It was an awesome recipe, although we would have had way too much icing if we made the whole batch. (Luckily I only had a little bit of icing sugar, so we made 1/4 of the recipe and had enough to do most of them.)

We also made Cookie Nests, which are my all-time favourite Christmas cookie.

COOKIE NESTS
1 c. butter
1 c. icing sugar
2 egg yolks
1 tsp. almond extract
2 c. cake flour (not all-purpose flour)
1/4 tsp. salt
rosebuds

Cream butter, and add sugar, yolks, and extract. Sift flour & salt, and gradually add to butter mixture. Roll into balls on ungreased baking sheet. Push in a rosebud. Bake at 350 F for 10-12 minutes.

Then we made the best ever chocolate chip cookies, using some of the leftover rosebuds chopped into chunks, rather than using regular chocolate chips. I also used 1 tsp. vanilla and 1/2 tsp. almond extract, left out the nuts, and only used 1/2 tsp. salt. But it's based on the Original Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, which is the only recipe that seems to be foolproof for me when it comes to chocolate chip cookies.

I had some frozen Gingersnap cookie dough in the freezer, so we cooked those up as well. They are nice and chewy (except when you eat them frozen solid), and I put in pieces of crystallized ginger as well. Yum!

Here's a plate of the finished products. There's no way they're gonna last till Christmas!!