cookie baking extravaganza 2011

I began to suspect that the universe had it out for me when I woke up on Friday morning with a sore throat. Those suspicions only increased when my mother-in-law, who was supposed to watch the boys this weekend while I baked cookies, cancelled on me at the last minute on Friday evening.

When I woke up on Saturday, it was clear that I had a cold. And when I left to go shopping, I made it halfway to the grocery store(s) before I realized that I didn’t have my massive shopping list -- the one that I had spent days compiling, categorizing, and checking against my printed recipes and cupboards. When I returned home to retrieve it, it was in the trash can. Covered with -- you guessed it -- trash. At that point I was too irritable to even care, so I just brushed off the worst of it and went on my merry way. Ho ho ho.

I started baking cookies on Saturday night and finished last night at a little after 8:00. Here’s the end result, times 25:

Here’s what I made, with my sister’s help (both in the baking department and the kid-wrangling department):

Pretzel turtles
Buckeyes
Mint chocolate chip cookie dough truffles
Nutter Butter snowmen
Rugelach
Chocolate caramel cookies
Lofthouse sugar cookie bars
Oatmeal butterscotch coconut cookies
Red velvet crinkles
Hot chocolate triple chip cookies
Chocolate cherry blossoms

I had two failures: this peppermint fudge, which never sat up for me, and these soft sugar cookies. They baked up very dry, so I scrapped them in favor of the sugar cookie bars. The frosting, however, was divine.

I also made homemade hot cocoa mix for the boys’ teachers, along with dipping spoons:

I dipped plastic spoons in melted chocolate and sprinkled them with crushed candy canes, marshmallows, shredded sweetened coconut, toffee bits, and sprinkles. I also dipped a few in melted peanut butter chips, and sprinkled those with miniature chocolate chips.

I always forget how exhausting this gigantic cookie-baking weekend is. I was literally on my feet all day yesterday. I didn’t eat anything except a surreptitious bite of cookie or dough here and there. By the end of the day, my feet hurt horribly, and my back was unbelievably sore. But I had a great time baking cookies with my sister and the boys (who were really very good), and a long, hot bath and a full night’s sleep went a long way towards making me feel better. Today I feel like I could do it all again tomorrow.

(Except no. Not really. I definitely need some time to recover.)