Holiday Cookies

I love the holidays if only for the food. We get the best of the best--ginger, pumpkin, chocolate, molasses--everything that says warmth. Oh yeah, and that's just the dessert side of things. While I don't have the sweet tooth I once had, I still greatly enjoy spending a whole day baking cookies. I took last Friday off to get started on my long list of cookies to be made. Shawn gave me a look when I showed him the eight varieties I planned to make in one day, and I reassured him that I had a plan. A cookie plan. Needless to say, given the great number of refrigerator cookies I had planned, they all didn't get made. Not even close. I still had a great time.

Ginger shortbread--my first time attempting shortbread

The sometimes infamous "crack" almonds

Mexican Wedding cookies, Russian teacakes, walnut crescents...whatever you call them, they're delicious

Vanilla pretzel sables

Chocolate and vanilla spiral sables

On the left, chocolate covered crackers and peanut butter, on the right, chocolate dipped macaroons

I got tired of dipping, so I went freestyle the rest of the batch

I am pretty proud of all my cookie accomplishments this year. I tackled a lot of butter cookies, which are sometimes a little fussy to bake. But trust me, I tasted them all and they are good. Admittedly, I hate coconut macaroons, but the ones shown above are not bad. The only sweetener is the sweetened coconut, so they don't have that sickly sugary taste I'm used to with coconut macaroons. My favorite is definitely the vanilla pretzel, though.

What are your favorite holiday cookies? I got some nice responses on Facebook when I asked and that's how some of these ended up on my cookie plan, and then were gifted to those who requested them. Let me know...you might just get lucky, too!

I'll be back soon with a more cohesive entry, but I felt the need to share my baking adventures and let my few readers know I'm still alive. Until then...MERRY CHRISTMAS!