Cookie Carnage

 "Oh yes, I would LOVE to do that!" I chirped like an idiot when Suzanne suggested a blog cookie swap thing. Did I then remember to take some artful staged pictures of cookie prep and baking and display? Hahahahah no the fuck I of course did not. 

I did haphazardly shoot a pic of this measuring cup with some chocolate chips in it, beside a weird counter shadow.

We had people over Friday night and it was great fun and I made my first ever Christmas tree charcuterie thingy...

AND there were TWO cookie plates on the dining room table in the very next room, but did I photograph those? No I did not.

I have done quite a bit less baking than usual, partly because Matt was away and I was doing all the other Christmas stuff, partly because I'm just slightly less willing to break my body and mind in order to achieve some mystical pinnacle of Christmas perfection this year.

Have baked for five years or more:

Toffee shortbreads/shortbread meltaways:

I found this recipe in a little magazine thing when I was organizing all my recipes years ago and I still have the pink magazine page on my fridge. My mom started making these in regular time and I was a little bitter about it because they are my Special Christmas cookies, but she uses margerine instead of butter which makes hers, in my opinion, very slightly inferior, so that's okay.

Salted Chocolate Toffee Pretzel Bark

Isn't it amazing how with the internet you can think "I'd kind of like to try making lemon-kumquat Brussels sprouts in a Balsamic-raisin reduction" and chances are someone will have tried and perfected a recipe for it? I looked at that bark that uses soda crackers as a base and thought "I kind of feel like it would be better with pretzels". And someone with a much finer kitchen sensibility than I had thought the same thing.

Made last year for the first time (I think), and am grateful to my last year's self for noting this down in a Google doc so I remembered to make this this year, because they are really really good, and quite easy to make:

Gingerbread cookie bars with white chocolate chips

Made for the past two or three years 

Chewy gingerbread cookies with lemon glaze (don't currently have a photo of because I made a batch and a half and then a double batch and they have all been swiftly dispatched)

Cream wafer sandwich cookies:

These are cool because they have a different flavour profile than most of everything else I make (which is various gingerbreads, various shortbreads and a few chocolate things). The wafers are almost not sweet enough to eat without the icing, which would be too sweet without the wafers. The first year I made them I used big cookie cutters and didn't roll the dough thin enough and the cookies were terrifying - like a hamburger, but cookie. Now I use smaller cookie cutters and still do not roll the dough out thin enough!

Make every few years when I remember it's a thing and have the bandwidth to do the three separate steps:

Millionaire's Shortbread.

Made this year for the first time:

Chocolate bark with stuff on top (crushed candy cane, toasted almost slices, chopped-up cookies)

Angus is home! I still have a shit-ton of stuff to wrap! I went to Farm Boy today and expected it to be way more busy and hostile but it was okay.

Picture of Angus in my family room in my very own house, Eve and Lucy being exceptionally photogenic and me and Margot and Suzie from Friday night, just steps away from some really picturesque cookie plates