Christmas Cookie Baking - Round 1, Day 1

Christmas just would not be Christmas for me without baking cookies and sharing them with our families. Since we are going to visit my family for Thanksgiving and will not see them again for Christmas, I have been spending the past few days baking cookies to take them.

I am not quite sure yet how I am going to like this system. Will the cookie burn-out wear off quickly enough in time for me to willingly tackle another round? It is nice to only have half the work right now though.

I started making the doughs last week and made 2 -3 batches a day. On Monday I began baking.

So far I have made 7 varieties. There are 3 more batches of dough in the refrigerator that I'll make tomorrow, as well as 2 more that I have to make the dough for and bake.

I made chocolate-chocolate chip cookies,

cranberry sandies,

snickerdoodles,Mexican wedding cookies,candy cane snowballs,

the rest of the maple-pecan cookies and candy cane cookies.

I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but I did something wrong when I was making the candy cane cookies. The dough didn't turn out like it usually does. I had a really hard time rolling it out into ropes to make the cookies. After baking them, they just didn't taste right either. (There is nothing wrong with the recipe, just the cook!) So I decided to not waste my time rolling out more candy canes and just plopped teaspoons of dough onto the cookie sheets. The kids and Eric are still enjoying them. They really taste fine but they are not my usual candy cane cookies.

Here are some pictures throughout the day.

My sister asked me to make her cookies that she can use for entertaining, so I am making sure that she gets at least a dozen of each variety. My grandma likes to freeze her cookies and snack on one or two a night until they are gone. My parents generally eat very healthy, but they do indulge in cookies on occasion, so I'm making sure I give them a small sampling of everything too.

Here is the finished product at the end of day 1 of baking. My plan is to finish up tomorrow so that I can focus on laundry, packing, cleaning and making an apple pie on Wednesday before we leave. Stop by 5 Minutes for Mom for Tackle-It Tuesday, Tammy's Recipes for Kitchen Tip Tuesday, and The Lazy Organizer for Talk About Tuesday.