Cookie Extravaganza 2012

Together with Captain Adorable, I made cookies. Dozens and dozens of cookies. Only 3 kinds--ultimate sugar cookies, rugelach, and almond spritz--but it took a lot of time and was a lot of fun! Here are some photos of our creations. I make cookies because I love making them, but also to send to my father-in-law (this is actually the third time now).

Carefully cutting.

Removing the individual cookies from the dough.

Transfer the cookies to a baking sheet.

On the baking sheet.

Out of the oven, cooling on wire racks.

Ornament shaped ones are decorated with colored sugar.

Rolling rugelach.

Painting rugelach with milk before they are topped with cinnamon sugar.

Rugelach (plain) cooling on wire racks.

Sugar cookies ready for decoration.

Finished Ornaments!

You can see the tin for my FIL on the top right. A layer of rugelach is already packed.

The first snowflake--icing and sugar!

Lots of snowflakes. We learned about how the icing works with these cookies.

Capt. Adorable wanted the tops of the stockings to be white. 

Waiting for the icing to dry. We decided to decorate the trees in two ways.

Ready to go!

The green sugar on top of the icing adds extra sparkle!

The three iced cookies.

The plate of cookies we kept. About the same amount was sent to my FIL.

Almond spritz cookies! Cooling on wire racks.

Capt. Adorable just saw the photos of cookies above and began asking if we could make more cookies!!!

The is the first year I've made spritz cookies and the last batch I made was miraculously easy, so for this batch I decided to make almond ones. They were not easy at all. First I had to toast the almonds, then let them cool, then grind them to meal, then make the cookie dough. Then the dough was too stiff to squeeze out of the cookie press, so I had to trouble shoot, and eventually had to add more butter to soften the dough enough...or was it the time spent in the mixer? All in all it took 2 hours from start to finish. I think they taste fabulous--light and rich--and decided not to decorate them because I like them just the way they are.

The only problem with making cookies is that way too many of them end up in my mouth. I might not make cookies next year...or at least not so many...we will see. I recently learned that another family member has started sending cookies to my FIL so it seems a bit redundant for me to continue. How many cookies does one man need?!