2010 - Put Your Back Into It

After cutting out all the Sugar Cookies, I had to skip a day of baking yesterday (Dec. 9). I'm knackered (to coin a British expression) and my back still aches! Sugar Cookies can be simple or difficult, depending on how much you want to do and how detailed you want them to be. So you can have perfectly satisfactory results even if you don't want to invest too much time or trouble.

Lots of Sugar Cookies to decorate.

I tend to go overboard with the shapes, colors and decorations. I have a big box of cutters of every shape, make and size. I always keep a palette of gel paste on hand. Same with powdered egg whites, to make the Royal Icing. And I collect decorations as avidly as I do the cutters! I'm always so happy with the results that I keep making them despite the trouble — at least once a year.

Just a sprinkle and still delicious!

Still, I have been known to cut out all the cookies in a single shape and simply sprinkle them with colored sugar before baking. And they are delicious that way! But for the holidays, I like to invest more thought and effort into the frosting and decorating for those extra-special results. And it's nice to do a few this way so you can enjoy them straight away!

Dunkable Brownies - so delicious and so easy.

But rather than try to do any more work bent over today, I decided to mix up a batch of Dunkable Brownies (and the Sugar Cookies can wait till tomorrow to be frosted).

I also plan to make Coconut Cream-Filled Macaroons — the dough, at least, which can sit overnight in the fridge. These are so great and they remind me of snowballs. We always need more Hedgehog Cookies, and I want to make Nestle's Chocolate Chip Cookies (especially to give away). I'm not excited that Charlie has requested "black-and-white" cookies (Checkerboard Cookies). Ack! They're adorable little shortbread cookies but they take a LOT of work, with an egg-wash and a ruler! So, we'll see about those.

Checkerboard Cookies are pretty and work-intensive.

But for today, I concentrated on Dunkable Brownies and wound up with 6 dozen, which are now nestled in Ziplock bags in the freezer. I made the perfunctory no-nuts dozen for Charlie because he really likes my brownie cookies too.