christmas cookies

I baked dozens and dozens this year, and gave most of them away as gifts.

So far I've had rave reviews, although I'm sure some of that is just being polite. I've always thought of myself as a good baker, but my sister pointed out that whenever I bake, she inevitably hears a surprised little "oh" or "oops" from the kitchen as I discover I've missed a step, mismeasured an ingredient, or completely misread a recipe.

But the cookie photos are so beautiful. They entice me into making 4 or 5 different types of cookies, doling them out in small baskets and tins and plates over the holidays.

The first cookies I baked were the very best ones - almond chai spice wedding cakes, little round snowballs dusted with powdered sugar.

The gingerbread cranberry biscotti were fragrant and spicy - and hard enough to break a tooth on, if you didn't dip them in coffee first.

The cappuccino shortbread, dipped in chocolate, were excellent - thanks to Jane re-measuring the flour after I accidentally added 2 cups too many. They looked beautiful as well, considering they'd started out on the sheets with some very risqué creases.

The cardamom-spiced pecan butter cookies turned out much flatter than the picture-perfect snowballs in the magazine, and a whole lot sweeter, too, what with the 2 extra cups of sugar I threw into the mix (oops) instead of holding it back to sprinkle on the cookies (there's a reason you should read the whole way through a recipe). At 130 calories per tiny cookie, they were tasty nonetheless.

The marshmallow snowmen were the most fun to make. My 14 year old niece Quin joined me on the snowman assembly line; we gave them Pocky arms and M&M noses, dipped them in caramel and coconut, and dotted on eyes and buttons with melted chocolate. The two best snowmen went off with my niece to grace her gingerbread chalet; the rest nestled one and two amongst the biscotti and cookies in my tins and baskets.

The last few tins of cookies are sitting on the table waiting to be delivered this week, and the bakery is closed for another year. It'll take those full 12 months for me to convince myself and everyone else again that I really am a good little baker.