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hereinantwerp
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| Posted: Dec 07 2007 at 10:01pm | IP Logged
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I like to bake cookies but find I wear myself out if I try to do more than 2 or 3 kinds at a time. Bad back. It does help me last a little longer to wear birkenstocks on a big baking day!
I'm trying to trim it down this year and decide which ones I really, really want to make. Sometimes I've been too ambitious and we end up with all these cookies no one really wants. Actually I'm thinking through this tonight! Here's what I'm coming up with so far:
Tonight I finally hunted down a recipe I had years ago and loved: "Super Easy Chocolate Bars". It is very, very easy and very, very yummy. Mmmmmm, can't wait!
I like bar cookies. If I do throw in an extra cookie, I might make some butter pecan bars I made a few years ago, very easy and good, or a fruity cranberry-orange type of thing. Anyway, bar cookies mean just one pan in the oven--somehow I tend to get really irritable when I have to switch pans every 10 minutes! And I get distracted and burn them!
A recipe from Sunset many years ago: "Mega Ginger Cookies" (they use crystallized ginger). My dh loves these but I might make them after xmas if things get too busy (?)
My husband's family always made Spritz (simple butter cookies you make with a cookie press). These are pretty and easy and taste good, and you can use the same dough and flavor it in different ways (chocolate, a coffee glaze, nutmeg "eggnog" glaze, crushed nuts, sprinkles, crushed candy canes . . .). I'm thinking this year if I do a major baking day I am simply going to make a huge amount of these, with the different "toppings".
And FUDGE. With & without walnuts. LOTS of it. It's my favorite thing!! I found a very easy but VERY good recipe on the allrecipes website, "Aunt Teen's Fudge". Wow is it good.
I remember as a child making these balls with pecans that we rolled in powdered sugar. I liked those. And we always made sugar cookie trees with green frosting and red hots. My parents still make them most years :-). My grandmother would make all sorts of things like peanut brittle, "Divinity", peanut butter fudge, these little bundles with chinese noodles, lots of things. But for our fast paced life these days I think we have to pick and choose!
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MarieC
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| Posted: Dec 08 2007 at 7:56pm | IP Logged
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Cay Gibson wrote:
| We have to watch that because too many sweets lead to waste. |
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Yeah....this can be a problem for me too...but in my case it's too much WAIST! 
I love to bake....if only I enjoyed cooking as much as baking...dinnertime would be so much nicer!
We have several marathon days in December and do a number of kinds of cookies as well as fudge and another candy or two. Nothing especially hard....usually a few kinds of bar cookies, some cut-outs, snickerdoodles. My kids love to melt white chocolate and dip Oreos in it. I add mint to the chocolate and they turn out pretty yummy. We chill them for a bit to harden them up.
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8kids4me
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| Posted: Dec 10 2007 at 7:43am | IP Logged
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We will be getting started this week with our baking. First will be peanut butter fudge and some cookies to send to Rob in Iraq(with plenty to share around). Then, it's chocolate covered cherry cookies, Mexican Wedding Cakes, macaroons, peanut butter blossoms, ribbon cookies(an icebox cookie), spritz, and maybe some sugar cookies to decorate. On Christmas Eve, I make stollen to eat for breakfast the next day. Last years was so tasty, there was none left at all! I hope I can duplicate that this year.
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KellyJ
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| Posted: Dec 11 2007 at 11:02am | IP Logged
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I have to get back to baking! I did some the week of Thanksgiving and froze the fruits of that labor. However, I don't have enough for mailing to the relatives. So, I need to bake more.
I am also in charge of a baby shower that is Christmas week. So, I've got baking to do for that. I was hoping to already have cookies done for that event and patiently waiting the big day in the freezer. That's not happened yet though.
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eileenonhim
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| Posted: Dec 11 2007 at 12:48pm | IP Logged
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Oh, I just LOVE this part of Christmas preparations!!!
I don't know how far I'll get this year--I seem to be in slow motion for some reason--but usually we make about 10-12 different kinds, and freeze as we go. No one is allowed to eat more than one or two to "taste" until Christmas Eve-Eve, when we put out a tray for our little "just us" party, and then the majority are taken to my mother's for her party for all my brothers, sisters and their families. The rest are available for snacking all through Christmas season. (Oh, we also give away small traysful as gifts, too.)
I was the main cookie baker in my family, starting when I was a teenager, and I loved it (still do!). I really want to include my kids in this whenever possible, because it means so much to me! When baking with kids, though, it's a lot more challenging. Not just the mess (my dad's mom, an excellent cook, used to say that you could tell a good cook by the amount of flour on the floor--the more, the better!--so we must be awesome), but many recipes are a little "fussy"--too many little ingredients, things getting knocked over, forgetting stuff, little fingers in the baking powder, hands everywhere, me guarding the beaters with my life, a lot of "No, don'ts" "Hey, wait a minutes" and "No. Put that down. Get that away from the baby. No. I said No. No. No! NO!!!s". Stuff from which the most enduring memories are made...
This year, I'm trying to approach this through a little bit of prepping--dry ingredients pre-measured into well-marked ziplock bags, as many wet ingredients as possible placed in a tupperware 2 cup shaker ahead of time, that sort of thing--so that all the kids need to do is dump once and take turns mixing. So far so good. When we made our cutouts the other night, I set everybody up in "teams" to do the rolling & cutting--daddy, me and a big kid paired with each of the little kids (though I ended up mostly being "the runner"), and this actually worked very well!
Anyway, we should be making at least 2-3 kinds every week, but so far we've only gotten to two (and the cutouts aren't frosted yet!). I guarantee, though, that there will be more, if I have to stay up all night doing it at some point--I have a reputation to uphold here!! (I just hope I don't get all crabby about it--sort of defeats the purpose, y'know?)
Merry Baking!
Eileen
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asplendidtime
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| Posted: Dec 11 2007 at 1:51pm | IP Logged
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To get things down to a dull roar, I bake through Advent, I freeze the results, I only bake with one dc at a time, and I make a list of what I can handle.
This year we'll do:
Rocky Road Squares (No bake and easy)
Sugar Cookies
Marzipan Squares
Chocolate Macaroons (No bake and easy)
Cocoa truffles (No bake ans super easy)
Spritz cookies
Rice Krispy Squares
I am not sure if we will get more adventurous than that.
And we will make an ice cream cake for Jesus' Birthday!
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4Real Forums : Our Lady's Loom, Larder, and Laundry
Topic: Baking Cookies in your home
