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.
Your sugar cookies look beautiful and yummy!
Well done Emily AND Brian!
And Happy New Year!
Carol/Mom