After a little rooting around in the hall closet, I unearthed my KitchenAid and after a little dusting off and washing up, it was ready for use. I am sure there are many ways to tackle the holiday baking challenge but I usually go through my tried and true recipes, consult Pinterest and any other sources on my radar and finally make a list of the goodies I want to make and the groceries needed to do it. I usually go through this process in late November and settle on my baking list in early December. My list usually consists of about six different items, some old and some new, that may or may not complement each other. I’m not the sort to tackle it all in one day which is way too overwhelming for me.
First on the list this year was making gingerbread cookies using a wooden pinecone cookie mold I ordered online last month. I had never worked with a wooden mold before so settled on a single batch of dough for experimentation purposes with the mold and to get the dough right before doubling or tripling the batch. I sprayed and floured the mold several times through the process and eventually got the hang of properly pressing the dough into the mold, leveling the cookie with a knife, knocking the mold on the counter just right so the cookie fell out of the mold intact and finally placing each cookie on parchment paper on the cookie sheet. The mold is fairly large so I only got 16 cookies from the first batch but learned I need to moisten and sweeten the dough a bit before making the next batch but after a dusting with powdered sugar they were beautiful and boy were they tasty dunked in my morning coffee and even better with peppermint ice cream. Needless to say we quickly tore through the first batch.
The next cookie on the list was my tried and true chocolate crinkles. To lessen the effort I made the dough one day and baked the cookies the next. I added a little coffee to what seemed like dry dough so the cookies came out more like cake than cookies but are still tasty; I have already enjoyed my fair share but froze most of them for safer keeping. Left on the list are lemon drop cookies, sugar cookie cut outs and/or spritz cookies, Russian tea cakes, peanut butter thumbprints with chocolate kisses, pretzel/rolo/pecan bites, orange cranberry bread and finally, homemade pink peppermint marshmallows. I’d also like to try fudge again and the pineapple cookies from my childhood but I’ not sure I will get to them all. Anyway, enjoy your holiday baking adventures!