Sunday, January 4, 2009

Christmas baking

This is what I baked for Christmas:
a pan of cake gingerbread (hot water recipe)
a pan of domino cookies (choc. shortbread with white chocolate chips, cut into 1x2 bars)
three rounds of pressed shortbread (the kind that makes 'petticoat tails')
two rounds of oatmeal shortbread (first time)
one round of spicy cornmeal shortbread (also first time)
one batch of cheese shortbread (sliced roll)
'checker cookies' (a roll of butterscotch and a roll of chocolate fridge cookies, cut into quarter-strips and reassembled - my own invention!)
three batches of butter pecan cookies
gingerbread cookies decorated with a snowflake pattern from white (flour & butter) decorating icing, which I've wanted to try for ages
two batches of chocolate shortbread
two batches of rolled shortbread cut in rounds
sugared walnuts, about 4 cups
6 dozen butter tarts
2 dozen sausage rolls
lots of cheese straws to use up the sausage roll pastry
cornstarch shortbread dipped in coloured sugar (the recipe on the cornstarch box)
12 dozen rolled cookies with icing
2 dozen roll cookies painted with egg yolk & food colouring, for people wishing to avoid the sugar hit
a butter cake with caramel icing, decorated with the remaining red & green icing, as a pseudo-birthday cake for me (Mark had already bought me a birthday cake, but it was carrot cake & I wanted something less virtuous) which I'll post a picture of when he uploads his pics next. (Done!)

Insert partridge and pear tree joke here.

Yes, I do like baking. People sometimes boggle at me for doing this, but mostly I find it relaxing, because, like ironing, I choose when and how much to do, and I can see the results of my work. I get a bit fussed over finding space to store the iced cookies while the icing hardens, before I can put them into the big tin, but that's not a terrible problem.
You should come over and have some cookies. There are plenty left.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow. I managed a double batch of shortbread (cornstarch variety) and an apple pie. And I was pretty pleased about the pie!

batgirl said...

Apple pies are hard!

Bear in mind that I only decorated the tree, not the house, and most of my presents are done by online donation - no wrapping!
-Barbara