Cookies!

This week has been my week to indulge in Christmas's culinary delights. On Tuesday night, I put together a lasagna for later in the week, baked pumpkin bread and muffins, made Snickerdoodles, and whipped up some cake frosting.

On Wednesday night, I made the inside of peanut butter balls (known to many as Buckeyes) and light and dark dough for cookies. I also attempted, though rather failed at, making Spiders (chocolate and butterscotch over chow mein noodles) -- I think I had either too many chow mein noodles or not enough chocolate and butterscotch.

On Thursday night, some of Wes's colleagues came over to eat the lasagna, dip the peanut better balls aka Buckeyes, and bake and decorate some of the gingerbread cookies. We had a pretty nice time -- a group of people at and over 30 with not a small child in sight decorating Christmas cookies -- as we garnished our cookies. Wes made a special one for one of the women there (see lower left). It became not so much a cookie with icing as icing supported by a cookie. I don't know how many layers of icing was on there. It was kind of a Pollock-esque piece by the time it was done. Even our resident anti-Christmas-baby-puppy bachelor managed to consume one of the finished products.

On Friday, several of my students came over to finish baking and decorating cookies. The girls had hot chocolate, cut out and baked more cookies, decorated, watched a movie, and played Scrabble (in which my failure to teach them spell became apparent). They seemed to have a genuinely nice time, and even stayed almost an hour later than they had to as we were all engrossed in the game.

Wes and I don't have kids yet and won't have ones old enough to enjoy these traditions for several years, so it was extra-special to share these traditions from home with friends and students. I figure by the time I have kids old enough to decorate cookies with me, I'll be old hat at this.