Christmas Cookies 2014

When we finally began Christmas vacation on the 19th of December, I started baking.  My goal was to have everything done and ready to go for December 24th to deliver gifts of cookies and candy to the neighbors.
I made it, but not without some anxiety!  I had some new cookie cutters this year, and wanted to try them out in addition to some of my favorites.

 I also found some new sprinkles...  Christmas lights!  I'm a sucker for Christmas lights...  Love them!

 This is one of the many cookies I made from the kit "Ugly Sweater Cookies".  I used my own dough, but bought the kit for the sweater cookie cutter.

 Click HERE for the recipe for this awesome cookie dough.  One thing I did change in the recipe this year was to use Orange Emulsion from the bakery supply store.  It has a more intense orange flavor than regular orange extract, and kept the cookies nice and moist.

 I had lots of fun with the candy cane cookies this year.

 One of my very favorite designs.  I saw it on the Wilton site, and this is the 2nd year (I believe) of using the holly sprinkles.  I used them everywhere this year.... and still only used 1 tube!  Amazing.

 The reindeer were too much fun!  :)  Do you see that they are gingerbread cookies turned upside down?

 I also made the following candy to add to the cookies in the gift tins:
English Toffee
Haystacks
Pecan Fudge
Chocolate dipped peppermint sticks
Salted caramel Pretzel Bark

 I had a great time playing in my kitchen as I always do, and was able to give many friends these edible gifts.

Valentine Cookies

Williams Sonoma had an unusual cookie cutter in their February catalog - an enormous heart!  It's about 6 inches tall, and almost 8 inches across.  I had to search for it in the store, and found a bunch hiding on the bottom rack of a display in a basket.

I rolled the cookie dough out a lot thinner than usual since the cookie is so large.  They were lots of fun to decorate!

 I had white and red fondant at the house, so I stopped at a local cake shop to pick up some pink fondant, and found some purple/pink/red heart sprinkles. 

 I baked 6 of the large hearts.  Our neighbors received a selection of the smaller cookies, spritz, and 1 or 2 of the larger cookies.

 On the trays, you can see the spritz cookies I LOVE to make!  I bought a Hershey's chocolate cookbook, and it had a chocolate spritz recipe.  The dough was not as nice as my butter spritz recipe, but they tasted fantastic.

 I like to dip the spritz cookies in the Wilton dark cocoa candy melts, and add sprinkles.  With these, I dipped them in the dark cocoa, then in white and added the sprinkles.  It was much easier to see them!

You can get a copy of my Sugar Cookie recipe (it really is fantastic) HERE, and the Butter Spritz cookie recipe I use HERE.  One comment on the Butter Spritz - I don't like almond flavoring in cookies, so I use  butter extract.  Makes the flavor amazing!

Happy 2013 to All!

 Here are some pictures I took of the Christmas candy and cookies I made for our house and as gifts for some of our neighbors.  If I haven't already said it, we have wonderful neighbors, and even though it's very busy, and we don't get to chat as much as we like, I like to show them a little appreciation at the end of each year.

In early December, I took a class on how to use fondant.  What an eye-opener!  There are a few more things to learn, but the class was so overloaded, I left pretty angry.  BUT I did learn quite a few things, so I was able to make my cookies prettier than last year. :)  One thing I realized, I didn't take any pictures of the Christmas tree cut-outs.  They turned out so cute, too.  Next year for sure!

These are the Butterscotch Gingerbread men I make, I also use this dough to cut out Gingerbread houses to decorate with the Royal Icing and sugar candy.

Even though the candy canes are sugar cookies, I used some mint extract to attach the fondant, so they have a nice minty, candy-cane flavor.

I thought some of these mittens turned out really cute.  These are the delicious sugar cookies I make with the orange oil and orange zest.  My husband asked me, "So you bought the oranges just to use the outside?"  We actually did eat the oranges.

One of the girls from work gave me some spritz cookies, so I decided if I had the time, I would make a batch and get out my Pampered Chef cookie press.  I got the dough recipe off Food Network, and it worked like a dream!

Here is the candy I made in addition to the cookies - Haystacks (my all-time absolute favorite next to Mom's angelfood), meringue cookies, and fudge.

 Here you can see a Poopie!  He's a good kitchen helper - he sits and watches to make sure everything turns out right, and is a good companion.  He does love to sit on the chairs while we're in here!

These are a small sample of the cookies and candy selection I made for Christmas 2012.


Please leave a comment. Thanks so much!

Christmas Cookies and Candy 2011

Here are some of the cookies I baked and decorated for Christmas this year. I have 2 recipes from Taste of Home I've used over the last few years quite successfully. The Sugar Cookie recipe is posted on the blog under the label Recipes. The gingerbread is a recipe called Butterscotch Gingerbread Men. They're delicious!

I also dipped pretzel rods, made 2 batches of fudge for the first time, made the haystack cookies, and dipped raisins, peanuts, and pecans in chocolate. At the bottom of the post you can see the gift boxes I put together for the neighbors.

Click on a picture to see it enlarged!












Here's Mamie Eisenhower's Million Dollar Fudge recipe which I added pecans. I also made a microwave fudge with walnuts.


These are the dipped pretzel rods, with a Stampin' Up punch and stamp decoration at the top.


Here's a picture of one of the gift boxes I put together. There were 4 in all for the neighbors.



I really LOVE LOVE LOVE Christmas !!!!!!!!!


Your comments are always appreciated!
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A Proud member of The Lime Light. Click on over to see what we are doing.

Christmas Cookies! 2009

We've had some wonderful neighbors welcome us to our new neighborhood, and since I do LOVE to bake at the holidays, I made up these trays. We went to deliver them tonight. I really do enjoy surprising people!!! My husband even made the rounds with me tonight to deliver the cookies. My dad and his dad would have never done anything like that!! Kudos to my husband for sure!!

This is the tray as it was delivered. I wrapped it in green saran wrap, and attached a note showing everything that was included on the tray.



My snowmen look a little sad, but they were fun to make! They do taste great!! It might be a sugar cookie recipe (here on the blog), but I added orange flavoring and orange zest to the dough. Yummy!!

I like these trees much better! It's a Wilton cookie cutter set. Bake each piece separately, and then 'stick' them together with frosting. I really like the sparkle gel frosting!!

Here are the meringue cookies I love so much... Snowballs, as they're sometimes called. I added mini chocolate chips as a surprise.

Who doesn't love chocolate dipped pretzels? I had a great time with the chocolate drizzle on the top.. can you tell?

These haystack cookies are my absolute favorite. They have some unusual ingredients for cookies - but they're absolutely delicious!!!! Can't you smell them?

Here's a picture of the saltine toffee I made. I'd looked at this recipe for almost 3 years now... and decided to try it. I shouldn't have waited this long! I wrote it down in my book immediately!

I hope you've enjoyed looking (and hopefully smelling) my selection of Christmas cookies and candy. My grandma, mom and aunt used to get together one weekend between Thanksgiving and Christmas to make the Christmas cookies. My sister and I always helped... it was a HUGE job! They made just about anything you could think of. I don't do that much by far, but it's one of those traditions I must keep going!

Let me know if you'd like any of the recipes!

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A Proud member of The Lime Light. Click on over to see what we are doing.