Cookies Galore!

Guess what I did all week?!

Yep, Mom gave me a week off of school to make Christmas cookies. Of course, I'll have to do that school farther into the summer, but I'm very short-sighted and don't really care at this point. :D

So, I started out on Tuesday with my trusty cookie book.






















Actually, I didn't use it right away. I began everything by draining some maraschino cherries - you know, those red things you pick off the top of your ice cream sundaes and try to pass off on your younger siblings. These cherries were for chocolate-covered cherries which I actually don't really like, but our neighbors rave about them every year, so we have to make them.

















I then used some of those cherries to make Buried Cherry Cookies, a chocolate cookie with a cherry on top smothered with frosting.

















Wednesday came, and I covered the dry cherries with a white concoction which I'm sure is something kin to the white stuff inside Oreos. (that comment is for Beth)






















Next I rolled out peanut butter balls for Buck-Eyes.





















This looks like something out of Tron. Can they steer their motorcycles between the big blobs?

















On Thursday, I started some sugar cookies that I was going to decorate. My recipe called for Ammonium Carbonate, also known as baker's ammonia. Don't ask me why we put it in cookies, it doesn't sound like something that belongs. (It's actually a very unique leavener.)

Its smell didn't help, either.




















The comparison was striking.






















Lighting a candle to cover up the ammonia smell, I rolled out, cut, and baked 87 of these little things.

















"Evaporation is a cooling process. Evaporation is a cooling process."

That's what I think every time I wash warm cookie sheets.
















Chocolate...
















...and wax...





















...meet heat, and an exchange of energy takes place.

In other words, time to cover the cherries with chocolate.

















This is called "what you do with left-over chocolate."

















This is when I finally stopped ignoring the clock, and started thinking how it had been 6 hours since dinner and how there were 6 hours until when I was supposed to start practicing piano.

I got to bed at 1:40.




















Friday afternoon, I started frosting my sugar cookies, and I frosted all 87 of them for a long, long time. I had my first encounter with making and using Royal Icing. It turned out fine, and actually reminded me of tightened meringue. The only problem was that the recipe made maybe a little more than four times more icing than what I actually used.





















I'm glad Sally came to pay me a visit.




















Next, at maybe about 10:30, I made Oatmeal Scotchies, oatmeal cookies with butterscotch chips.

















Then after that, I made Rudolf's Antlers.

Then at 12:00 I started dipping the Buck-Eyes in chocolate.

A few guys came to get a tour of the process and were fascinated.

Fortunately throughout the tour, there were no casualties... except for this poor soul.

I did meet a few strange characters, though.

Somehow a Muslim got mixed up in the group.

One of the Beatles came too.

Or maybe it was just a guy who needed a haircut.

I got to bed at 3:00.

Here they all are on Saturday morning.

Peter counted them all as Ab and I were arranging them on plates for our neighbors. He came up with 437 (more or less). My only disappointment is that I didn't make any really light cookies,

like Scandinavian Almond Bars.

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Oh well, if it hadn't been 3:00, I would have made them too.
Anyway, that's a somewhat brief review of my week. (Yes, it's brief compared to how long it was in real life.)

-rjentina