Christmas Cookies - 2009 Edition

As every year in the Christmas Season, I throw caution and calories to the wind and make a batch of Christmas cookies.

As every year I have a few classics (in the sense I'm practically make them every year) and a few newcomers.

My favorite recipe is probably the one for Cinnamon Stars.

Sweet, chewy and wonderfully nutty. This year I've made them a bit smaller then before, which I think works well. You can eat more of them without feeling too guilty, right?

A repeater from last year (on special request by my mom) are the Ginger-Fruit Sticks

Made with candied Ginger, dried apricots and almonds, plus some honey and other lovely things there are wonderfully nice and fruity.
I took a couple of those to friends last night and already got one request to pass on the recipe.

Another great hit from last night were the Linzer Cookies, which are a new addition to the list, but have a good chance of coming back next year.


I've made those having my dad in mind, as he rather likes cookies with jam. The cookies are base on a famous Austrian cake. They are a tad on the soggy side, but the taste is quite lovely.

The next cookie recipe is sort of a half cookie / half praline thing, which is in princible not a bad thing, but didn't quite work out the way I wanted.


They are very brittle and I already have quite a few broken bits in my cookie tin, which I really can't offer to anybody else.

Last, but not least, I've made a patch of my favorite short bread with ginger, which was in the oven when I made the pics, but to be honest they are a bit on the boring side of photography. Just imagine a round, light brown cookie. There, that wasn't to hard, was it.
The taste though .... mmmmmmhhhh.

Once a Year

... I get the x-mas cookie itch. I mean, serious, I don't bake much over the year, and why should x-mas time be different? Besides, I do prefer a nice sandwich over a sweet cookie any day. And there are the calories ...

Usually, I have three standard recipes I do every year, which are coco macarones, cinnamon stars and ginger Heidesand (which is a buttery cookie to which I decided a couple of years ago candied ginger would go well ... and it does fabulously)

This year, I haven't made any of my standards (yet), though one is going to be close.

Jam filled cookie stars. I made them for my dad, who loves those (or at least a variation of them, my mum used to make)




I got some of the dough left and made puzzled cookies.

I did get the cookie cutter a couple of weeks back and sure I had to try something with it.

Nutty triangles with chocolate


Coco-choco spirals


And finally (though I have plans for two more kinds I want to try)
Ginger bars (with candies ginger, tried apricots and almonds)


Not a dud so far in the lot

White Christmas

Everybody is dreaming of a white Christmas (exept maybe those living in a northern country and thus get all the snow they possibly could want and more).
Here in Germany it's usually a less than 50 percent chance of snow on Christmas eve. Normally it's just too warm for snow and I remember many a Christmas where it just was miserable and wet and not at all like the postcards depict it.
This year, though, there's a really strange thing going on and one I don't remember ever happening before (at least not at Christmas time). It's not snowing and there's no snow and there will be no snow, but still, there's a white Christmas. What's going on is that it's been cold the last couple of days and then, suddenly, fog rolled it and the fog started to form white frost (there's a link to Wikedipia here to explain it, in case I didn't make myself clear)

It's quite lovely actually (as you can see from the pics I've made just in front of my door)


Though the coolest one is the frozen spideweb on my balcony.

Isn't that just cool?

Well, it being cold outside and Christmas just around the corner, I've started a second batch of cookies. Didn't have much time for it so far this year (with the trip to Japan and all) so I had to hurry to get any done.


From left to right:
- Coconut macaroons (which I've made actually end of November)
- Angel Eyes (a soft shortbread cookie with some jelly in the center)
- cinamon hearts (tradition dictates that it should be in the form of a star, but I couldn't find my star cooky cutter - they still taste great)
- ginger-honey halfmoons (with candied ginger - after that photo was taken I've decorated them with a bit of chocolate, so those are not the final versions)
- and finally my first attempt on honey cake cookies (also called Basler Läckeris). I have to admit the attempt wasn't a full success as the stuff turned out to be rather on the hard side (and now that I've found there's an entry for those in Wikepedia, I learn that they are suppossed to be hard, so maybe not a failure after all ;)).

Finally, I'm still knitting socks. Though yesterday I've first had to do some repairs on some older socks. I know, I said a couple of weeks ago that I don't really need new socks as the old ones don't wear out. So much for that statement, as I've found out last week.


Luckily I've still got plenty of the original wool left (Wollmeise in the color Thunderstorm Sky), and it was only the lower foot affected, so I had to rip up only a little bit and could fairly easily fix the problem.

A Very Merry Christmas to everbody.

Distractions

Sorry about the none-blogging of last week. I did borrow a Gamecube from a friend of mine, and now I spend far too much time with playing 'The Legend of Zelda - The Wind Waker '(and have loads of fun doing it too)

My stitching has suffer a little bit because of it (*gough, gough*), but at least I've still got a few pics to show from before the game hijacked me.

Latest update on King Tut
I've finshed that middle panel underneath his chin, which was all stitch with one strand of thread instead of two. I don't know why I hate to stitch single strand, but I do...
I'm still waiting for the gold cord - I've cancelled my first order, as I didn't hear anything from them for 3 weeks and they didn't reply on my first reminder, but it looks like the second order doesn't go that much better.

The two mini-kits I've did while I was in Japan:


As I've seen kiwis (admittingly only in the zoo) as well as penguins while I was in New Zealand this brought up some memories.


During my vacation I've had some visitors, so I did bake some cake (I love baking cake, but seldom have the opertunity)
The strawberry-rhubard cake before baking (I've left bit of the egg white cover off for the photo)

And after:


The original recipe is more for fall with grapes and apples, but I really like the taste of this (even though, after baking, the dough turned out to be a bit on the soggy side)