Christmas Baking

I've had to considerably tone back my baking expectations over the years, but the Christmas season simply wouldn't be the same without doing a little baking. I really tried to keep it simple this year so I wouldn't be ready to pull my hair out with the mess that would undoubtedly ensue.

We stuck with Rolo pretzels and cutout sugar cookies with the boys, as well as a new recipe for Blizzard cookies one evening by myself.

Also, while in the past I would just pick one Saturday and tackle ALL of the baking in one day, this year we spread it out and would only do one kind of cookie per night over the course of a couple weeks. And the cutout cookies were separated out into two days as well: One afternoon we made the cookies, and the next evening we decorated them.

This one was purely coincidental, but I caught it after the fact lol Looks like Cashel is giving me the bird.

Unfortunately, the sugar cutout cookies, although DELICIOUS, ended up being soft and broke easily, so while they were delicious, we couldn't take them to any Christmas celebrations. That was SUPER helpful, as Kendrick thought he was helping and forced me to double the batch. We have LOTS of cookie parts to eat now lol A revelation for this year is that we need to get a star and a Christmas tree cookie cutter. Also, we need to get more solid cookie cutters, since the ones we have lose their shape easily.

It may be a lot of work (and way more cleanup than I care to talk about), but I think the boys have fun doing this every year. I'm excited to see Ryan jump in on the fun next year!

Christmas Cookies (December 21-22)

Since we've had such busy weekends lately, we hadn't had the opportunity to do much Christmas baking at all. I had to resort to a mid-week baking frenzy in order to get at least SOME cut out cookies made for the boys to decorate before our company arrived.

Monday evening, we made the cookies themselves and got them cut out and baked. The boys didn't help much until I was at the point of rolling them out and cutting them, and even then, it was pretty short-lived. Cashel was much more interested in making a mountain out of the scraps.

They escaped mostly unscathed, although the boys were pretty intent on sticking their fingers in the cookies, and trying to cut them with stuff, so they weren't overly pretty by then.

It was getting late on Monday by the time I got them all baked, so we waited until Tuesday to decorate them. The boys had a blast, even if it was super messy for this sometimes a little OCD mama.

They enjoyed eating them MUCH moreso than decorating them.

Daddy even joined in on the decorating fun since I had to start making supper, and I have to say: He is pretty darn good at decorating cookies!