Goodies, Goodies Galore!!!

I always hear the ladies work and church, when Christmas time comes around, talk about how busy they are because they have to get their holiday baking done. Wow. We don’t normally go all out with baking but this year we certainly did more than normal. The first bunch of cookies we did were kind of an experiment. The picture in the cookbook looked all cute and pretty. Ours didn’t quite turn out as nice. But they were still pretty yummy. They're supposed to be cute little teddy bears.

The next bunch we did were candy cane cookies. We even flavored them with peppermint. They turned out much better.

Then the art work really began. Blaubeere and son came over with all her equipment and we made some really cool looking cookies. Yes, those are paint brushes they were using.

They had bags of frosting, sprinkles to scatter on them. They were using “Royal Frosting”, which sets up a little harder when it dries. In the end, they made some fantastic looking cookies. I took some to work for a treat day and they got all kinds of compliments, ooohs and aahhs.

The next bunch we made have a little story to go with them. See, we wanted to double the recipe so we could have a few extra. But when it came time to add the sugar we accidentally quadrupled it. What to do, what to do. So, like any sweet-loving American family, we quadrupled the rest of the ingredients. So we certainly did end up with lots of this kind.

Then there was the cookie exchange at school. Take in a plate and bring home a bucket, a real assortment of all kinds of cookies made by everyone participating in the exchange. We ended up with not just cookies but fudge as well. That was great!

The goodies weren’t limited to just cookies, tho. We got some really yummy candied apples from Nicole. And we had a bunch of candied popcorn we’d bought from the scouts during their popcorn sale at the end of November.

So with all that, along with a few goodies we brought home from the store we ended up with more than enough Christmas goodies this year.

It all reminded me of when I was a kid and my Mom would do her holiday baking. She’d end up filling a couple of 5 gallon cans, with tight lids, full of every kind of cookie you could imagine. Then the cans would sit out on the back porch, where it was nice and cold to help them last. The nice part was that she was liberal as to when we could have some. Between the tight lid and the cold porch (you could only stand to be out there so long!) they didn't go too fast. We had all we wanted, certainly more than we needed. It was great. This is how great Christmas memories are made. Cool.