Every year I bake ridiculous amounts of cookies and other goodies, and package them as gifts for friends and family that we may not otherwise be able to afford to buy/make gifts for. It is a very busy and stressful time of the year, but the end result always gives me joy. I absolutely LOVE giving gifts to people. It's a great feeling to see someone smile and know you're the reason for that.
Anyway, this year I decided to try something different, in hopes of easing the stress on myself. I am going to make some of the doughs ahead of time, and try freezing them! I have lots of recipes I'm hoping to make, so I'm hoping that only having to bake and decorate them may help ease the last-minute workload. So again, I consulted my best buddy, Pinterest, and pinned some recipes that sounded scrumptious. Later, I went and narrowed them down, as I can't possibly make 30+ varieties. After stocking up on some supplies, I decided to start off by whipping up some dough to shape and freeze. The first one I tried out was a chocolate shortbread recipe that I pinned from Persnickety Plates. I edited it a bit though, as I LOVE chocolate and mint. Instead of the vanilla, I added peppermint extract. I also decided to double the recipe, as it claimed to not make many cookies. I tend to be a little scatterbrained and always have to wait for my butter to soften. I never remember to take it out ahead of time. There should be an app for that....
I will be interested to see how these cookies turn out. After the original poster bragged that the dough was so easy to work with that she didn't even need flour to roll them out, I had high hopes. Too high, I suppose. My dough turned out very sticky, and even after chilling overnight, was extremely hard to work with. Unless these turn out mind-blowing once they're baked, I don't think I'll be making them again. Even after making a double batch, I didn't end up with many cookies.
Next up, was a recipe I was very excited about, and I cannot wait until these are baked so that I can
Now doesn't that just look scrumptious? This was a dough that was extremely easy to work with. So much so, that I ignored my insane desire to run screaming to the sink to wash my hands, because oh-my-gosh-I-have-something-icky-all-over-them!, and balled them by hand....
I have found that with all these recipes, it is easiest to stick them on a tray in the freezer to partially freeze so that I can then transfer them into a freezer bag for storage. Now to resist the urge to bake them for myself.....
Next up was a recipe that I find very cute, as they are itty bitty versions of one of my favorite cookies my Grandma used to make us all the time....
Itty bitty peanut butter cookies! Aren't they cute? Don't ask where those lines came from, I have no idea. Some weird lighting thing I guess...
These little guys are (or will be) Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies from over at Tastes of Lizzy T. Not only are they adorable on their own, they will become itty bitty homemade Nutter Butters!! I bet they'll be even better too! This dough, while being extremely easy to work with, is very time consuming. I only made a single batch, and it took me a few hours, as I could only fit one tray in the freezer at a time. You roll the dough into little 1" balls, and let me tell you, it makes a TON of them. I probably made 8-10 trays of them today from a single batch of dough.
Let me tell you, I am exhausted from all these cookies! I still have one more type I am planning to make and freeze, and then one that I am waiting to just make and bake. Then I have other goodies to make for the baskets, as well as making a bunch of little boxes to package all these cookies in! I will include all these things in Pt. 2 of this "Experiment", where we will reveal how these all turn out after baking!
What do you do to simplify your Christmas preparations? Do you make anything homemade as gifts?
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