I’m a little behind on my cookie notes! It has been a busy couple of months and I’m still getting back into the swing of blogging. I thought you might be interested in seeing some more of the recipes though. In case you forgot, these were the cookies I made before the party. I’ll share our party treats in another post. I officially made all 25 treats, but some of them didn’t get photographed. Everyone was quite amazed. I ended up making about 2 batches of cookies every couple of days, sometimes three doughs, if they needed to chill.
These cookies are Chocolate Orange Pecan, Ginger Sugar cookies- hearts, and Norwegian Spice Cookies-snowflakes.
I thought the ginger sugar cookies didn’t have enough ginger. I was very into spices and unusual cookies this year. The Norwegian Spice cookies reminded me of apple pie and were one of the hits at the office. The Chocolate Pecan Orange cookies were also delicious, although I found that the chocolate cookies didn’t hold well and got kind of weird and dry. I would make a smaller batch of the chocolate cookies next time and wouldn’t bother making the ginger cookies. The spice cookies I would make again.
The chocolate cookies were from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookie magazine from 2019. The Ginger Sugar Cookies were from the Food Network December issue from 2016. The Norwegian Spice Cookies were from this website: https://roamingrosie.com/tag/norwegian-spice-cookies/
These Lemon Poppyseed cookies are from the Food Network December 2016 issue too.
The cookies were not super sweet and I accidentally left the poppyseeds out of the dough. As you can see, I just added them to the glaze. They almost started an office war between the Office Manager and another therapist who was trying to steal the tin. 🙂 Oh, and another therapist hip checked me away from my own cookies! It was a shocking, but hilarious display of cookie rage. 🙂 There was one other kind of cookie involved in this particular cookie mob and were also delicious. I found I tended to use the same magazine for a couple of different recipes- this one is also from FN Dec ’16.
Peanut Butter Crinkles with mini chocolate chips. I would make both of these cookies again. They both held well too.
The next one up was hotly contested and may have caused a not very Christmasy disagreement between the Husband and myself. These Cookies and Cream Drops from the Better Homes and Gardens magazine were either the favorite, or very much disliked. I was in the middle, but wouldn’t make them again.
They had frosting made from melting the middles of Oreos. It was weird and I didn’t like that part. They were either supposed to taste under-baked or I accidentally under-baked them. I baked them at the correct temperature for longer than it called for and they still tasted that way. They were also not sweet, which was really weird considering how much sugar there was in the recipe. I think they were supposed to be soft and cakey. The Husband had one bite, spit it out, and loudly declared them to be “an embarrassment to your reputation” and refused to take them into work! According to him, they were inedible. 🙁 However, at least a couple people at my work liked them, so they did mostly get eaten. As you can imagine, I will not be making them again.
Sadly for the Husband’s office, I declined to send many more cookies after that little incident. I was much offended. The Husband has since apologized and I have forgiven him his ridiculous statements… well, mostly…
I also made Malted Milk Brownies, Tahini Blossoms, and Dulce de Leche Thumbprints, all from the BHG magazine. The Thumbprints were too plain for me. They were a recipe that you made a large quantity of basic dough and then added to it. The second batch of them had cinnamon and other spices added to the dough and it still didn’t taste good to me. I won’t be making that dough again.
Lessons learned this year was that I definitely needed to add up amounts of ingredients like butter, flour, and sugar before the start of baking season. I definitely wasn’t prepared for the need for brown sugar this year and had we not had extra flour, I would have run out. The butter stores were good. I ended with about 10 pounds left, so probably used around 12 pounds total, just for the cookies. We did run out of regular chocolate chips, so I had to make a small Costco run to find more in the middle of baking season.
It was helpful to list out the specialty ingredients and know which recipes I was going to make ahead of time. I spread those purchases over a couple of shopping trips too, so that was good.
Getting into a routine of “make this dough to chill, then make this recipe to bake right away” was another good organizational tool. I felt very organized with all my lists in the same spot too. My blog notebook is full of all the lists! I still have about half of the notebook left too, so room for many more. 🙂
I still have a bunch of recipes I want to try, so I’m sure you’ll see more cookies this year. Hopefully not everyone at the office is on diets!
Please bear with me as I catch up on blogging again! I’ll bribe you with cute Fancy pictures, if I have to! Here’s one, so you know I’m serious. 😉
With that done, please excuse me while I head to bed. I have to have rest to bake up more cookies! Have a sweet night!
