Christmas Cookie Sampler

Candy Cane Cookies–these are a long-time tradition with my mom and I, and we’ve recently included Livvy. This year, four generations of “French women” were present in my mom’s kitchen, rolling out the dough. We make our initials out of any scraps leftover at the end and those are the ones we eat right out of the oven. Yum!

Chocolate Covered Cherries–my very favorite.

Peanut Butter Blossoms–my husband’s favorite.

Spritz Cookies–these require a cookie press, but the gadget makes loading up the cookie sheets go very quickly.

Velvet Sugar Cookie Cutouts–I love the flavor of these sugar cookies because they have cream cheese in the batter. The recipe makes a TON, so I will often kill two holidays at once by cutting out Easter eggs and bunnies when I do the Christmas ones. Or, if I make pumpkins at Halloween, I cut out trees and stars for the upcoming Christmas season. One thing I’ve never gotten right, though…the icing. Whoever decorates the sugar cookies featured on the cover of magazines possesses some sort of skill set I obviously lack. Here’s the good, bad and the…what ARE those? of this year’s decorated sugar cookies:

Clearly, my best effort to date. I frosted these with white royal icing that, for once, seemed to be the right consistency, then I used green food gel to make three dots in the middle. I drug a toothpick through each dot of green to make holly leaves, and used a red hot candy as the berry.

After the success of my stars, I got a bit cocky and imagined that I could use the same process to make garland on my trees. Not so much. But not TOO horrible.

Then, however, things took a turn for the comical. These were meant to be bells, and I wanted them to be silver-ish, but didn’t have any blue or white sugar crystals. So I settled on yellow, hoping they’d look gold. Nope. Switched to green, thinking that at least that was Christmas-y. That yielded mildly better results, but they still didn’t resemble bells. So I thought adding a red hot where the bell’s clapper should be might help, but then they started to look more like Rudolph. “Bingo!” I thought. “I’ll use chocolate chips for eyes and they’ll look just like reindeer, instead. No one will know they were supposed to be bells.” Well…my stroke of genius didn’t exactly work out. When Livvy got up from her nap, I asked her what they looked like, and she said, “Bells.” Hm. These won’t be going to the mailman. Anyhoo, you’ll find the recipe for Velvet Sugar Cookies in my Tastebook, but I won’t even bother telling you how to decorate them. You’re on your own.

As for our other favorites, I substituted my mom’s favorite molasses cookies (sorry, Mom!) for Gingerbread Men this year because I thought Livvy would have more fun making these. They turned out so great, they’ll be added to our yearly repertoire. And finally, I love my grandma’s Date Pinwheels, but they’re a bit too labor-intensive for this quick and easy cook. So I often make Chewy Date Bars instead, which utilizes a yellow cake mix.

So there you have it. We tend to try new cookies each year as well, but these are ones we can’t live without. If I get around to it, I’ll also post the recipes for the new ones I intend to try this year. Have fun making cookies! And, if you have like-minded friends, ask them to bake a few kinds each, and get together for a cookie swap sans babies. Now THAT’s a tradition I can get behind.