Christmas Cookies of the Past - 2023

For Christmas 2023, I made an old favorite, the sugar cookies and the royal frosting from the Flour Bakery cookbook. I invited my family over again to decorate them (and eat many of them) along with The Polar Express hot chocolate.  See my post from 2022 to get all the details of the toppings for the cookies and the hot chocolate.

Our cookbook club decided to do a cookie exchange for our December meeting which is the first and, so far, the only time we’ve done it.  I made orange chocolate shortbread cookies from Bakes by Brown Sugar.  I love the combo of orange and chocolate, and they held up and traveled well.  As always the cookbook club members went all out, and most people brought more than one type of cookie - some even 4-5 varieties.  Some made new cookies (like me), others were ones they have always wanted to try, and still others were old family recipes (these were my favorite to hear about).  We left with so many varieties of cookies, and I enjoyed eating them all week.  A cool trick that someone taught me at this meeting to keep your cookies fresh and from getting all hard - put a piece of white bread in with the cookies to keep them moist.  It worked! 

The summer of 2023, I wrote my first family cookbook which you can read about here.  In honor of this accomplishment, I decided to do one of the dessert recipes from my book.  I chose to make my aunt’s buckeyes which are peanut butter balls that are dipped in chocolate but leave a little bit of the peanut butter exposed.  They tasted great, but were not nearly as pretty as my aunt would make them.  I definitely need some more practice with my technique!  

The last cookie I made this year were peppermint sugar cookies from Tasty Treats and Eats.  They were soft and chewy with good peppermint flavor.  I rolled some in red sanding sugar and others in granulated sugar.  I also added in mini chocolate chips to add some chocolate flavor which I love with peppermint.