Baking weekend Day 4

Normally we get done baking a little bit earlier on Sunday and get the cookies plated and wrapped up but as I wrote in the last post we were just too tired.

So Monday night after working all day we got together and plated out our cookies, a process that took almost 3 hours.



These are the plates that are being given to friends and family.
For my coworkers and my stepdads crew we use the large boxes and take a larger assortment than what ends up on a plate. Remember that red box with the butter toffee cookies? Well that and another box that size are the "work" boxes.

I had a lot of fun baking this year but I am glad it is over.

Christmas baking 2008-day 3

Sunday mom and I have a ton of work ahead of us. While we had only 11 recipes of our 28 to go, all but 1 got frosted, glazed or in some other way a final step other than bake and remove from oven.


Mom frosting butterscotch cookies.


The last of the cookies out of the oven and cooling on the counter at about 7pm.




The full storage tables. Here are all the cookies done and waiting to be plated out.

We were so tired by the time the last batch came out and was done we decided to get dinner and call it a night. So Monday after work we had to plate and wrap all of this mass of cookies.

Baking weekend 2008-day 2

Saturday morning we got up nad managed to get some of the recipes that had been chilling run through the oven and avoid turning on the mixer for about 3 hours.This was nice for my step-father who had worked late the night before and was trying to sleep.

When we finally turned on the mixer it was to run about a bazillion of the Sparkling butter toffee cookies we make (4 double batches of them) because they are such a favorite of people we give the cookies to.

We spent 3 hours mixing, and baking these cookies.


The box is empty in this picture we only had maybe 4 sheets worth out of the oven.


Now the box is full and we still have more.
We had another storage tub of approximately the size of the box that ended up full.

We try to run all recipes that go at a temperature together, so by dinnertime on Saturday we had run through about 1/2 of our list and all of our 350 degree recipes.

We gave the oven and ourselves a break nad went out for some dinner and then came back and made carmel corn and fudge and then back into the higher oven temps.


The above picture is about 4 recipes short of where we were on Saturday night when we went to bed. The bar cookies and fudge were cilling on the other tables and the carmel corn was not out on the table yet.

Baking Weekend 2008- Day 1

We start each years baking with all these empty containers that we will store cookies in and the tables set up in the garage for storage are empty.



Another empty table.



This year instead of having to run up and down the basement stairs my mom thought why not use a couple of the plastic storage tubs that were used to store table decorations for the wedding and leave the ingredients in a closer and less strenuous spot. This worked out really nicely.



While I was at work for 4 hours mom got started and had 6 or 7 doughs mixed and in the fridge to chill.
We had 9 total that had to chill this year before baking.
She also got things prepped like chopping nuts and ginger and apricots for the recipes that required them.



We took a break for a couple of hours to go watch my cousin play basketball and then grab some quick dinner.

We managed to get 3 of our 28 recipes completely made by the end of day 1.

Christmas baking weekend-2008 Prep

The List (in mom's writing because mine is bad.)



With my mother having collected so many cookbooks we usually start in late October/ early November to look through and pick what recipes we are going to make for that year.

This year we ended up not picking out our final list until Thanksgiving but we had it be a family effort, My step-dad, sisters and my husband looked through the books with us and picked a few recipes they would like to see us try. We looked at the recipes and added a few and eliminated some as well as picking a few new ones out ourselves.

We ended up with a 28 recipe list this year.

Here is a list of what we made:
Frosted Cranberry Orange Cookies-Repeat from past
Chai Spice Crescents- New
Peppernuts- Repeat
Cherry Almond Bars- New
Amaretto Truffle Bars- New
Fudge- Repeat
Buckeyes- Repeat
Sparkling Butter Toffee- Repeat
Chocolate FIlled Russian Teacakes- repeat
Eggnog Glazed Spritz- repeat
Frosted Butterscotch- repeat
Creamy Mint Sandwich Cookies- New
Ivory Chip Strawberry cookies- New
Pffernuesse- New
Double Vanilla Delights-New
Italian Nut Gems- New
Italian Christmas Cookies- Repeat
Spiced Ginger Shortbread- New
Lemon Snowballs- Repeat
Carmel N Nut Corn- New
Snowy Bon-Bons- Repeat
Peanut Butter Banana Chip- New
Peanut Butter Bites- New
Cinnamon Crackle- Repeat
Spicy Ginger Crackle- New
Sweet-Salty Butterscotch- New
Coconut Maramalade Crescents- New
Lemon Butterflutes- Repeat

This year we had more new stuff than old. Hopefully our "fans" will like them :)

Christmas Baking Weekend- A Brief History

As far back as I can remember my mother and I have been making cookies together for Christmas. 

Of course way back in the day it was simple things like she'd make and roll out sugar cookie cutout dough and I would get to cut out and frost/decorate the cookies and maybe get to roll other doughs into balls to go onto baking sheets.

When I was probably 11 or 12 I finally got to really get into the thick of things and mom would have me mixing things and baking some of the recipes on my own but it was still simpler things we didn't do much in the way of out of the ordinary recipes. Typically we'd make cut-out, a recipe called church windows ( melted chocolate, powdered sugar,egg and colored marshmallows mixed together and rolled in shredded coconut), Magic Bars (aka hello dollies in my family) and maybe some peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies. No real complicated things at all.

About the time I turned 15 we tried our hand at some candy making along with baking , mainly melting candy melts and molding them, but we did do cherry cordials and peanut butter cups at least once if I am remembering correctly.

A few years later in my later teens/ early 20s mom and my step-dad started dating and his younger daughter (who was 13/14 at the time) got involved in helping us bake for a couple of years. Mom at this point discovered the little cookbooks at the grocery store checkout and started picked them up from time to time. So we started branching out and trying new recipes.

So over 10 plus years mom has probably amassed about 70 or so of those little checkout cookbooks and probably 2/3's of them are Christmas cookie books.

Over the years we have also upgraded kitchen equipment. It used to be a hand mixer and wooden spoons were used to mix our doughs. Now we each have a Kitchen-Aid, silpats for our baking sheets and lots of patience for trying new recipes.