'Tis the Season

I sit before the computer with a very short list of to-dos before Christmas arrives.

The days of December have been consumed with the Christmas activities.  The last of the presents were wrapped last night and I am so relieved.  The secret to my success this year...NO CHRISTMAS SEWING.  My sanity and I are on good terms these days.

See the current state of my sewing machine... 
This skirt has been on mid-stitch pause for about 3 weeks now. 

Aside for the regular Christmas preparation my time has been consumed with cookies.  There was a cookie exchange at work and for that I made key lime shortbread cookies.  These were ok - but may not be made again.  The kids were not fans and since they belong in large part to my audience I have to consider their opinion which it comes to investments in my time.

I love.love.love sugar cookies.  I would save all my extra holiday calories just for sugar cookies.  For the church cookie sale this year I wanted to make sugar cookies.  I had sugar cookies last year which contained almond and since I'm a huge fan of almond.  The combination of the two sent me searching the internet for a good recipe.  I landed on this recipe from iambaker.net.  There is also a great frosting recipe and lovely ideas for decorating. 

I did use margarine instead of butter, I grew up with a mother who baked with margarine and it's molded my palette.  I could have used butter - but chose not too.  The dough needed quite a bit more flour than the recipe called for so I have to believe it's related to the margarine/butter switch.  After the first batch of cookies I used a second cookie recipe but that recipe is on the lap top and I'm trying to get this post up tonight before I loose my motivation.  

To keep the creating process quick and efficient I used a template square.  I believe it was a 2 1/4 square.  I used my older pizza cutter to make the slicing fast.    

My favorite part beside the testing had to be decorating.  Methods for decorating have changed since I last created sugar cookies.  I love the internet for it's inspiration and I learned that piping frosting makes for pretty frosting and better results than my previous method.   The designs on top were fun to create. and highly addictive. 140 cookies went to church and were a big hit at the sale. 

 

The kids get to take some cookies this week to school for their class parties to keep it simple they decorated with sprinkles.  I enjoyed their banter while they shared thoughts and philosophies on the choices of sprinkles for each cookie. 

Rough estimates have my cookies totals at 300 cookies.  I think I'm good for the moment.   Thankfully the freezer holds the not so pretty cookies for some day in the future.  I believe I'll make these again next year.