The 12 Cookies Of Christmas Countdown

12 days before Christmas. 12 cookies to bake for the pleasure of you and those you love.

I am actually a bit of a cookie connoisseur. Therefore, I assure you that you will not be led astray by any of these recipes because they are my tried and true favorites. I have eaten these cookies in every form: dough, hot from the oven, 3 days old, and they simply don’t disappoint at any stage.

Today’s offering heralds from my earnest desire to eat things that both look beautiful and taste sublime. For me, there is no in-between. Actually, I’d rather eat something that looks sub-par but tastes marvelous than eat something that is gorgeous and tastes like sawdust. But this recipe meets all criteria.

As a child, I loved those little Keebler iced animal crackers with the soft-pink icing. It was back in my “knows not the meaning of moderation” days and I could polish of the whole bag in an average of 2 sittings. But I never could get into the typical iced sugar cookie hoopla. I could pass up plates upon plates of Christmas tree cut-outs slathered in pastel green powder sugar icing.

And then, at the ripe age of 22, I stumbled upon this recipe. It hearkened back to the essence of the Keebler cookies of my youth but were far more sophisticated and evolved; imagine the Keebler elves closing the doors of their tree-trunk abode and moving to Buckingham palace—these cookies are classy.

Most of the recipes from the countdown will be my very own, but this particular one I pulled from a Bon Appetit magazine years ago (December 2000 to be exact). It’s been my go-to cookie-cutter recipe ever since then and now I invite you to add it to your baking line-up.

So here I provide for you the link to these sweet delectables:

Ladies and Gents, I present to you…The Holiday Sugar Cookie with Royal Icing. Enjoy!

Keeping A Promise

On Wednesday night, Lucy was feeling rather badly about herself because the whole dinner table was gushing over the meal Cade had just prepared for us, and I think she felt everyone had forgotten about her delicious meal earlier in the week. So I pulled her onto my lap and wrapped my arms around her bony little shoulders and quietly told her how I was so proud of the recipes she had made this week that I actually put them on my blog for everyone in the world to see. This immediately cheered her up and she went back to her dinner a bit more fortified.

Little did I know, but her brother had been listening to our conversation. So later in the evening as I was cleaning up the kitchen, he came up to me and casually asked, “Mom, do you think one of my recipes from tonight could be on your blog one day?”

I wanted to cry and laugh and sink into a pool of sadness all at the same moment.

Kids are forever needing our approval and we simply are inadequately equipped to fully satisfy that eternal hunger in them. Sometimes being a parent breaks my heart.

With that melancholy harangue behind us, I am today making good on my promise to Cade that “of course I will put your recipes on my blog because they were so delicious”. However, the following is not a recipe to be over looked as simply a mother humoring her 7-year old.

This recipe was flippin’ awesome.

And it comes from a cookbook that I highly suggest you adding to your library: Nigella Express. It’s one of the latest (if not the latest) installments of culinary poetry by Ms. Nigella Lawson. I would, of course, recommend any of her cookbooks, but I like this one for its attention to superb flavor while being economical with your time. No doubt, I will be forwarding along more links in the future to other recipes by her, but for now, I give you…

Noodle Soup for Needy People

And now I have kept my promise to Cade. I will sleep well tonight.

Have a great weekend!