Holiday Baking

I can’t believe Christmas is just days away!  I am WAY behind in my baking!!  I come from a pretty big family (3 brothers and 4 sisters, who at this point almost all have kids of their own), so buying gifts for everyone is virtually impossible since none of us are independently wealthy!  For that reason, shopping for presents really is not that big of a deal for my family and me; we usually either just buy presents for the “little kids” or draw names, or if we are really strapped financially, we just do not buy any presents.  The bigger deal is preparing food.  We always meet for Christmas dinner at my oldest brother’s house, and most of us bring some type of food. 

I usually bring a few things, such as my “holiday festive loaf” (which is a bread with sautéed red bell pepper, green onions, bacon (although I used soy bacon), and Parmesan mixed in), a blueberry banana cream pie, and cookies.  I am actually most known for the cookies. 

Ever since I was a little kid, I have been the designated “cookie baker.”  I was always very into “art” (drawing, painting, making clay models, crocheting, knitting. . . you name it), so when I made cookies, I couldn’t just frost them one solid color and pour a few sprinkles on.  I had to make them look like the imprint on the cookie cutter, complete with individually decorated outfits!  Even the Christmas trees had different colored “ornaments” and garland.  It was something I really enjoyed doing, so I guess that’s why eventually I was the one everyone expected to make them! 

I used to just make several batches of Christmas cookies and have them on a giant platter to set out on the buffet.  Then I started adding my famous oatmeal cookies to the mix.  Eventually, I started hearing some complaints that “all the cookies are gone, and I only got to have one” so in addition to the “community platter,” I started making each person in my family their own individual cookie bag with at least 4 Christmas cookies and a half dozen oatmeal cookies.  This seems to have quelled the complaints! 

My Christmas cookies are no ordinary sugar cookies; I decorate each one in excruciating detail (Santa has either blue, green, or black eyes, same with the mittens; the angels also have various eye and hair colors, sometimes different colored robes, etc.), so it takes me a really long time to make these cookies.  Take a look:

My oatmeal cookies are different as well; I usually make them with applesauce instead of fat, and add dark chocolate chips, dried cranberries, and walnuts.  Sometimes I’ll even toss in a little ground flaxseed (shhh!!  Nobody knows these are “healthy” cookies!). 

Over the years, I have experimented with different ways to try and make the cookies somewhat “healthier,” and taste good.  Especially with sugar cookies; you have to have a certain amount of fat in the dough or it will not roll out properly, or will stick to the cookie cutters.  There is only so much you can do to reduce the fat and sugar content, but at least I know that the fat that I do put into my cookies is a “healthy” fat, and the other ingredients are organic and therefore free of pesticides! 

My most recent experiment (just this past week in fact) has been gluten-free, vegan sugar cookies.  Since this was an experiment, I opted to just make plain Christmas trees (no fancy decorating). I used Ener-G to replace the eggs, and it seems to have worked pretty well; the cookies took longer to bake than normal, but they still have a similar “golden brown” look to them, and are slightly crispy. Overall not bad; they do taste a little different than just regular “wheat” sugar cookies, but still got a thumbs up from my husband!  If you are interested, I basically used this recipe (but replaced the egg with Ener-G and used Bob’s Red Mill All-purpose GF flour mix).

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my blog so far. . . I’ll probably only write one more before the end of the year.  Until then, Merry Christmas!