On the Fifth Day of Baking, My Oven Made for Me

A large batch of ginger crinkle cookies!

These cookies are crunchy on the edges and chewy on the inside. A very tasty cookie, but they are the runner up for the cookie tray.

My cookie tray selection is definitely the brown butter cardamom cookies. They look traditional but the taste has a modern twist.

Thanks to Michael and his office mates for putting up with plate after plate of cookies this week. (Honestly I don't think it was too much of a burden for them to shoulder - I'm sure they will be missing the cookies next week when I am in CA.)

It's Snowing

This was the view out the bedroom window around 11:30 this morning. The snow was really coming down - you can kind of see it in the picture by looking at the brick wall in the lower half of the photo. All of the fuzzy white specks are snowflakes!

It started with hail/freezing rain, then changed to nice fluffy snow and now it's back to icy cold rain. Some of the snow is sticking and we're getting some good icicles off the fire escape.

On the Fourth Day of Baking, My Oven Made for Me

A ton of just OK pumpkin oatmeal cookies.

The first plate, wrapped and ready for Michael to take to work -

Now what do I do with the rest of them?

And the funniest part of this is I have two plates of pumpkin oatmeal cookies wrapped up on my counter and I get a package delivered this morning filled with what else? Yes, more home made Christmas cookies!

By the time the cookie exchange gets here I won't eat another cookie for months. OK, not really. But seriously I need to find a home (other than my belly) for all of the cookies in the apartment right now.

On the Third Day of Baking, My Oven Made for Me

What just might be the perfect cookie!

A brown butter cardamom cookie

These may look like your typical Russian tea cookie or Mexican wedding cookie - but the browned butter and hint of cardamom update the flavor profile providing and unexpected and quite delicious cookie.

This could be the one! Did I tell you I can get 4 dozen out of one batch too.

I'll still do some baking tonight and MAYBE Thursday night. I think Michael's office now quite spoiled with their daily cookie plate.

On the Second Day of Baking My Oven Made for Me

White chocolate caramel bars.

Sure they look nice, but they are SO sweet. Not what I'm looking for in a cookie exchange cookie.

Back to the oven!

Cookie Trials

I finally started trying some recipes for the cookie exchange extravaganza next week.



Cookie #1 - a delicious gingersnap lemon cream sandwich cookie. Once I got the gingersnaps to be more chewy and less snappy it tasted great. But they are a pain to make and I would have to make 2x the amount of cookies and icing too - way too much work to make 13 dozen of these gems.



They are being taste tested now, no early reports. If nothing else they look good on the plate.

Cookie #2 - a mini black & white cookie. As a tribute to New York City I thought a small size black & white cookie would be really cute. Well I mixed up the dough and started baking. No matter how much or how little batter I put on the cookie sheet they totally flattened out in to pancakes. Maybe my baking soda was bad? I don't know - but cookie #2 is headed straight to the dumpster.

Back to the oven tonight!