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Michaela
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Growing up, my mom would make the dough one day (usually a Friday), then bake two days straight (Saturday & Sunday). She'd make enough to last our family through December and into January....plus enough to take to friends. Including a few German Stollen for our family & friends.
I can bake dozens of cookies & they all disappear in a few days. I'm thinking of setting aside time each Sunday for our family to bake cookies together...enough to make it through the week. 
What does Christmas baking look like in your family?
Do you bake all your cookies at once?
A few dozen every few days?
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Michaela
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Maryan
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What does my family baking look like -- flour coated... everywhere. I'm a messy baker.
I make two kinds of cookies -- chocolate chip and peanut butter kisses. And I make them as needed during advent and two days before Christmas I make a couple dozen each for us, family and friends that we visit over Christmas. 
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~Rachel~
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Christmas baking... well like Maryan, I am a messy baker ... and I too bake throughout Advent.
The whole cookie tradition is relatively new to me, since I am English. This year I plan to alternate with some traditional English dishes 
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Rachel May
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I bake as needed also, maybe because cookies were only a small part of our growing-up Christmas food tradition? And today I was exceptionally messy.
I'm making Speculaas and some other decorating cookie so we can decorate them tomorrow. Some other day I may make gingerbread or other cutting cookie since the kids like to do that. I'm curious about what kinds of cookies other people bake. And do you just have them out all season?
The tamales, on the other hand, will probably be a 3 day process at least.
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joann10
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My s and I start baking after Thanksgiving and freeze the cookies as we go along. We always do cookie trays for all of our family parties and that adds up to many, many cookies. We do seven or eight different types and then dip pretzels and ritz bits peanut butter ers and make candies from the colored melting wafers to decorate the trays.
It is a lot of fun work.
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Barbara C.
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I don't do it, but my mom did it when I was growing up. Her cookies were famous far and wide (although to be honest I liked the way they looked more than the way they tasted). She would mix up and freeze huge bunches of dough sometime in early November.
Then she would take a week off of her job sometime around Thanksgiving. During that week, all we would do was bake and decorate. I learned how to use a decorator's bag at an early age. As each batch was finished, she would stack them in clothing gift boxes with a layer of saran wrap between. There were probably sixty cookies per box, and we usually made at least 10 to 15 boxes. Then they would be stacked in the large chest freezer.
Boxes went with my dad to work, me to school, my mom to work, various relatives, and some were saved for us at home. We even sent some to my cousin in Hawaii one year; her husband who was stationed in Iraq during the Gulf War; and another cousin stationed in Okinawa. Unfortunately, mom had to stop making them a few years ago. Her arthritis just got too much to handle the decorating bags for too long. Sometimes she'll make a small box-full for special occasions.
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LLMom
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I make dough ahead of time and freeze and then we bake all of our cookies on Christmas eve. It is one messy crazy day but everyone loves it. We make a lot and give a lot.
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I'm crazy messy and make at least 6 different kinds. It was not a tradition when I was growing up, but my children have made it one now. We love it. We always make a sugar cookie to decorate and chocolate peppermint pinwheels based on the same dough. I make 2 kinds (sometimes 3)of biscotti (I gift a bunch). Tomorrow we are making tons of speculaas some of which I will freeze. And I will probably make some linzer cookies, since I bought these great little cutters from Gooseberry and have yet to use them and one more cookie, probably a chocolate flavor. All of them get made in the week before Christmas though I am going to try to make some earlier this year and freeze. My husband just pretends he doesn't know that icing and sprinkles were flying all over the kitchen while he was at work.
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Fuzzy
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We did our Speculaas cookies tonight too! We have never decorated them. I am pretty messy myself! I like to think that is the sign of a good cook. LOL
I also only do a few kinds: choc chip and speculaas. I am hoping to get a new cookie press to try out, so I will do cookies more!
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KackyK
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My dd and I go crazy with baking, usually the third week of advent sometime, for a whole wacky day. The boys love it, the come in, steal a few and go about their business because they know no one is paying close attention!
We make probably 6-8 different kinds and we try new recipes. This can be dangerous as sometimes they just don't work out. We give away a couple dozen to several folks. So the boys like to come back in for when load up the tins. We even have figured out how to make anti-peanut cookies for our allergic friends.
Every year I say to myself there must be an easier, non-messy way! HA! Not happening with my dd. She really hasn't learned the whole idea of cleaning up as you cook. I don't know why, that is how both her father and I cook. Oh well that example isn't being followed.
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Lara Sauer
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I make the dough of several different types of cookies (sugar, molasses, peanut butter, chocolate peppermint, etc)in advance and then divide them up and freeze them in rolls wrapped in Saran Wrap. I find it is much easier to store cookie dough than it is to store the baked cookies. When I need some cookies, I simply pull out the dough that I want and bake as needed. I am a cookie-aholic. If there is a cookie in the house, I will eat it...Therefore, I have found that freezing the dough is a great solution. I can make a dough in 15-20 minutes, and I don't need to have time to bake. And, I only bake as many as we are going to eat! Baking 2 dozen cookies takes only about 15 minutes from start to finish as well, since all the prep work is already done. The other benefit of pre-making the dough and not baking is that our cookies are never stale! They are always fresh from the oven!
I must confess that I am a very neat baker. No flour anywhere other than in the bowl if I can help it. I live by the motto of not making a bigger mess than I want to clean up!
Also, I make a ton of chocolate treats: chocolate covered almonds, chocolate covered raisins, chocolate covered peanuts, chocolate dipped oreos. We also make chocolate truffles that we roll in crushed pecans. These take such little time, but the rewards are so great...and no flour!
Wishing you all a very blessed Advent filled with the scent of baking cookies and melting chocolate!
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ElizLeone
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LLMom wrote:
| I make dough ahead of time and freeze and then we bake all of our cookies on Christmas eve. It is one messy crazy day but everyone loves it. We make a lot and give a lot. |
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Boy, I would love to know what kind of cookie dough you freeze. I'm never sure which recipes I can do ahead like that. What a great idea to have the baking extravaganza on Christmas Eve!
We make oodles of Christmas cookies -- probably 8 or 9 types. We spend December 23rd driving around, delivering cookies plates to friends. However, I've never tried freezing any of them (either in dough state or in finished state).
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Michaela
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Rachel May wrote:
| I'm curious about what kinds of cookies other people bake. And do you just have them out all season? |
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Great question.
I have really enjoyed reading what Christmas baking looks like in everyone's home. Do you bake throughout the year?
I'm awful. I don't really make homemade cookies until around Christmas. Olivia will beg to make cookies, and I'll grab one of those refrigerated cookie doughs while at the market.  I'd like to change that, but other than Christmas cookie recipes I only have a peanut butter cookie and chocolate chip cookie recipes.
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marihalojen
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When I was growing up it seems like we made a batch of cookies every day in December, old family traditional ones, new cut out of a magazine ones, and that's not counting fudge and candies! I think Mom began that with us older girls so she could spend time with the younger set in the afternoons. It was fun!
Marianna and I don't make nearly that many now and I miss my floury apron.
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lapazfarm
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We make cookies all year long! But we really make a LOT at Christmas.
Growing up it was a tradition in my family to make a bunch of sugar cookies in fun Christmas shapes and then us kids would paint them with egg yolk and food coloring. I continue the tradition with my kiddos.
But my dd(18) makes most of the cookies around here. So far this season she has made about 10 different types!We are definitely on cookie overload!
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stefoodie
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We no longer make cookies all year long like we used to -- allergies, etc. But after Thanksgiving, or at least through Advent and sometimes even through the Christmas season, there's baking here. We try to shoot for one recipe a day, as cookies make up the bulk of our food gifts. We freeze them in foil containers, then a day or so before Christmas (or whenever we're handing them out), take them out of the freezer and re-distribute them into gift containers.
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Aggie gal
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We do some cookies; but the kids and I really like the candy part. Okay, well I don't know if it's technically considered candy-- we just melt dark/white chocolate, dip all kinds of stuff in it, and then add holiday sprinkes to it. We put together plates (for local friends) and tins (for far away family) of dipped pretzels, turtles, buckeyes, heavenly hash, almond bark, and dipped clementine slices mixed along with a few cookie favorites. The kids LOVE dipping stuff and using colored sprinkles. Hubby loves all the leftovers that don't quite make it into the tins or onto the plates.
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stacykay
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Our two main cookie bakings are plain old-fashioned sugar cookies that we bake one day and frost/ice/sprinkle the next and springerle. We usually make them the week before Christmas.
I find I am adding more cookies in with our Feast day celebrations, but those are the main two. Oh, and my oldest ds (19) has taken over the springerle baking.
God Bless,
Stacy in MI
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sweetiesmom
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We will be baking on Saturday. We make the same six-eight kinds every year, and we try at least 2 new recipes. We also make 3 kinds of biscotti(freezes and ships well). In addition to a major baking day I also make candy of all kinds, hand dipped chocolates, fudge, toffee. We give lots away as gifts and I sell a fair amount of chocolates.
I just cleaned out my chest freezer in anticipation of our baking and I found some cookies from last year!
My Mom and my sisters come over and we really make a day of it. The kids love watching and helping.
sweetiesmom
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Cay Gibson
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My girls all love to bake. I just got off the phone with my 17 year old who wanted to know if we had brownie ingredients in the pantry. She wants to bake some tomorrow.
My younger girls, because they're home all day, would bake every morning if I let them. We have to watch that because too many sweets lead to waste.
We make cookies often throughout the month but, come December, there is more thoughtful planning and preparation for cookie baking. Afterall, this is serious business. 
Anyway, I baked Dawn's "Orange Snowball" cookies yesterday for an Advent Tea I went to. They are DE-li-cious!  My whole family wanted to sample them on my way out the door and begged me to make more for them. Annie wants me to make some this month for her birhtday and I promised I would. (The recipe is found in Christmas Mosaic under "An Orange for Frankie" and somewheres online, I pretty sure .)
I think the little daughters loved them more than the mommies...but only because the mommies have waistlines to worry about.
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4Real Forums : Our Lady's Loom, Larder, and Laundry
Topic: Baking Cookies in your home
