Holiday Baking Overload

I spent a lot of time with my oven in the week before Christmas.  After a busy few months, I finally had time to bake.  Good thing, because in the 9 days before December 25th, I had 2 cookie swaps to attend, as well as some personal projects.

I tried to keep my swap cookies simple, since I needed 5 dozen for one and 7 dozen for the other.  I returned to a favorite and made whole wheat sables with mini chocolate chips (instead of the cacao nibs in the recipe).  I’ve made these cookies a bunch of times; they always turn out well and it’s easy to make a lot in a short amount of time.  I made 2 batches and had plenty leftover.

For our school cookie swap—which required 7 dozen cookies—I decided to try a new recipe: Swiss Cinnamon Crisps.  My initial idea was to use a fluted pastry cutter and just make square cookies, but I was unable to find a pastry cutter to purchase.  An initial attempt at using a pizza cutter yielded extremely boring looking cookies, so I broke out some mini cookie cutters I’d forgotten I had.  Cutting out the cookies made the recipe take a lot long than it would’ve otherwise, but I was thrilled with the way they looked.

Of course, I couldn’t stop there.  Brian wanted to make and frost sugar cookies, which I hadn’t done in ages.  With a little help from his mother and Martha Stewart, we had a great afternoon being creative.

I also baked 2 batches of orange dark chocolate scones from my (long lost) friend Emily’s blog, largely in an effort to use up some oranges and buttermilk.  I used Ghirardelli Bittersweet Chocolate Chips, some of which I chopped into smaller pieces.  The scones are amazing.  We each ate 2 on the first day I made them, but the rest are (hopefully) going into the freezer for a cold winter day.