So this was the year I made seven (!) different types of cookies which were baked over three different weekends. To be fair three of them were Pampered Chef mixes which helps make things go faster and have fewer dishes. But they still need to be baked and stored (and eaten).

Before I tell you about all the new ones I made, I did make one constant - the cutout sugar cookies from the Flour Bakery Cookbook. I made a double batch which made about 80 cookies - so we had a few to decorate! I was tired of royal icing which just doesn’t have the best flavor, so I decided to make “My Favorite Sugar Frosting” from “Cookies for Days.” This frosting was aptly named. It really was good! You can’t be quite as precise as you can with royal icing, but you can still pipe it and decorate with it. And they taste so good! This will probably be my go-to decorating frosting from now on. And since I’m not the best piper, I don’t mind the decorating being less precise when the taste payoff is so much greater. Most of the cookies were decorated by my family. One of my nieces even asked me months before December if we would be decorating cookies again this year which just tickled me that I have made a nice little holiday tradition with my family. This year was our third year decorating cookies, and it’s been neat to see their skills progress with time. Hopefully mine have too! I do usually keep back a dozen for me to decorate by myself when I have time to concentrate and practice any new skills I may have picked up along the year.

There were three treats that were from Pampered Chef holiday mixes - the shortbread cookie mix, the gingerbread mix which came with the gingerbread house, and the marshmallow mix which came from the hot chocolate gift set. For the shortbread cookie mix, I used cookie cutters to cut out the bottoms and tops. Unfortunately I didn’t quite get my shapes and patterns matched up to make them like linzer cookies with a little cutout window. I used Pampered Chef’s holiday jam which was cranberry and orange flavor so it was a nice tart compliment to the buttery sweet shortbread.

The Pampered Chef gingerbread mix was used to make the walls and roof for my gingerbread house along with around a dozen cookies from the leftovers. I’m usually not a big gingerbread fan as it’s a little strong for me, but these were not overpowering of ginger. I did really like them. And my gingerbread house turned out so cute! Gingerbread house tip - decorate the walls and roof pieces flat, let them dry completely, and then assemble.

The last Pampered Chef mix was my favorite. It was to make homemade marshmallows. I’m not a huge candy maker so getting mixtures to precise temperatures is a little intimidating to me, but these were quite easy to make. And the results were so much better than I expected. I can’t wait to make them again this year! They were sugary, pillowy, and had a nice chew to them. I can’t recommend them enough!

The chocolate-coconut layer bars from Taste of Home - Celebrations are basically like a homemade Mounds bar. Chocolate and coconut are a classic and tasty combination. They contain 3 layers - a crunchy chocolate coconut base, a creamy coconut layer, and a smooth chocolate layer on top. These would be good anytime of year too - not only Christmas! And if you prefer Almond Joy, just add a whole almond to the top!

The peppermint meltaways from Cookies for Days were my peppermint cookie of the year. These were soft little peppermint sugar cookies that had a swoop of peppermint icing with a little hard peppermint pieces on top.

The final and seventh cookie were the frozen hot cocoa cookies also from Cookies for Days. Now I’m not the biggest chocolate fan (I know, I know!), but for some reason they intrigued me so I went for it. These were soft chocolate cookies with hot cocoa mix in the dough, topped with hot chocolate frosting, and some mini marshmallows. These were great too!

I loved making so many treats this year helped along with some mixes to make it faster. Can’t wait to see what I will make this year!

Christmas Cookies of the Past - 2024