Sugar Mountain

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I wanted to write a nice little post about my Christmas cookies yesterday and ended up so ticked off about Dubya that I forgot completely about it. So anyway, as you can see from the above picture, I made cookies. A lot of cookies. And that doesn’t include the Raspberry Squares I made two weeks ago or the Thumbprint Cookies I made with (read: for) my seven-year-old last week.

I started with two batches of my old standby, Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, and got to use my Pampered Chef Medium Scoop for the first time. The scoop made things go a lot quicker. While it made cookies a little bigger than I usually make no one seemed to be complaining.

Next up was a batch of the missus' favorite, Choc-Oat-Chip Celebration Cookies. I’ve always had a problem with these things spreading out too much, and I still do. Putting the cookie trays into the freezer to cool before re-using them seemed to help a little but not completely.

Then I moved on to the cookie-cutter cookies. I always make sugar cookies but this year I tried a new recipe from Good Eats guru Alton Brown. Mine have always come out dry and uneven. Alton’s tip is to use confectioners (10X) sugar instead of flour when dusting the rolling pin and work surface. Flour removes moisture from the dough, while the sugar just makes the cookies sweeter. I took another tip from Alton and bought quarter-inch trim from Home Depot and made “rails” for the rolling pin to ride on. That way everything was exactly a quarter-inch. The result was my best sugar cookies ever, if I do say so myself.

The last cookie I attempted wasn’t as big of a success. Using a recipe I had from a Philadelphia Inquirer Food section from last December, I tried to make Austrian Linzer cookies. I don't know if there was something wrong with the recipe or what, but I had to adjust the size of the cookies (they were the size of hockey pucks) and the baking time. I still wasn't happy with the results. The missus took them into work with her and said they were a hit, but the missus also works with Learning Disabled kids, so there you go. The recipe went right into the recycle pile.

And I'm still not sure if this is going to be enough cookies to get us through the holidays. I would appreciate any suggestions (other than eat fewer cookies).