The cookie baking blizzard came and went this year already (and weirdly, left no snow). All the butter! All the cream! All the chocolate! All the nuts and dried fruit! Okay, so the last one isn't so exciting, but there was a lot of fruit and nuts in this house for a while. Panforte, anyone?

I don't think I made any new recipes this year, which is odd.  No wait, I made one new recipe, but I can't tell you because there are some of you out there getting it! Oh and the linzer cookies were new to me, but not terribly exciting. I'm getting ahead of myself. Here are the deets:

caramels: three kinds, all by martha, gingerbread, chocolate, and plain with sea salt on top

sugar plums: Honestly, I make these mostly because of the name. How could you pass up sugar plums at Christmas? These are spice filled, honey sweetened, date and almond laden-ed bits of christmas past. And they are vegan to boot.

hazelnut thumbprints: My daughter and I like these the best. This year I put a bit of ganache in the middle instead of the usual jam. Surprisingly, the jam is better, but no one has complained about the chocolate.

english toffee: I make this every christmas, but this year I got all fancy and cut it in squares instead of breaking it in pieces. You have to cut it when it's not too hot and not too cool. And hey, it worked! Also, I ate all the ones that broke.

alfajores: These were a new addition to the cookie roster last year and I've been thinking about them since! Creamy, caramelicious dulce de leche sandwiched between two light, flaky cookies with a crunch of sugar on top. Bomb! And hey, I wrote up a recipe for you on Dana's blog for her Sweets and Treats Christmas Countdown.

Oh and those linzers up there at the top of the page: wow, linzer cookies are kind of a pain in the butt. They just look so damn christmasy I had to make them. I used Karen DeMasco's recipe from The Craft of Baking (a killer book by the way). It was chock full of orange peel and nutmeg and hazelnuts. The texture was perfect, but I wasn't keen on the taste. It was almost too grown up and boring. Maybe a boozy filling would have made it grown up in a good way.

Gingerbread men too: well you have to make gingerbread men (look more instagraminess).

Merry Christmas everyone! We're off to Grannyma's. I'll see you back here on Monday!

There have been some lovely things coming out of the oven these days. I always tell myself I won't make a thousand kinds of cookies this year, but then well: there are the ones I always make and the ones my mom used to make and the favorite ones from last year and the new recipe I found this year. I kind of like getting carried away, but the problem is that I tend to favor the extra complicated cookies at christmastime and I come away never wanting to see another cookie again. This year that hasn't happened. yet.

fig pinwheels: these were a favorite from a few years back but they are less exciting to me now. The dough is super delicious, but the filling is too figgy. I think next year I'll make it with dates and orange peel.

english toffee: always good.

hazelnut thumbprints: I made these last year and didn't give any away because they were so good. This year I made a double batch (so I could share) and filled them all with apricot jam.

basler brunsli: I think these are Swiss cookies? They are chocolate and almond and rum and so grown up and wonderful. I'm going to share the recipe with you next week.

alfajores: this was a new one for me this year and blazzam! they are amazing. Two little flaky cookies, like barely sweetened pie crust with dulche de leche inside. awesome.

mexican hot chocolate cookies: these are new to me too and they are lame. The cookies are boring and not spicy at all. Oh well, there has to be one crummy recipe every year.

gingerbread and ganache sandwich men: I think gingerbread and chocolate are the best together, so I made these little sandwiches. How could they not be good?

All of the cookies I've made so far are packaged up and ready to go, but I'm working on another list: christmas cookies just for us. So far I have down these (which I make every year) and these (which are a perfect new twist on an old christmas favorite).

I bought the Liberty of London cookie jar from target for my mom's birthday. I also picked up a kid's sundress while I was there solely for the fabric, but now a little bird tells me they will be selling cotton curtain panels (aka straight up yardage) sometime soon!

Now you can't just give someone a cookie jar and not put cookies in it, so I made some chocolate cherry oatmeal cookies and damn if they weren't pretty good.  Dried cherries are dear, but they are so, so good. Raisins would work, but then they would just be oatmeal raisin cookies and that's no fun.

Chocolate Cherry Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients

• 2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 tea salt
• 1 1/2 cups oats
• 1 cup dried cherries
• 3.5  ounces good dark chocolate, coarsely chopped

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cream the butter and both sugars on medium speed until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the egg and mix on high speed to combine. Then add the vanilla.
3. Sift together flour, baking soda and salt. Add the flour mixture to the mixer (make sure it's on low) and mix just until combined. Add the oats, cherries, and chocolate and mix by hand.
4. Spoon heaping tablespoons full of dough, a couple inches apart, onto a lined baking sheet.
5. Bake cookies until golden brown, about 15 minutes. Cool and give away or keep them all for yourself.

Cookies! My favorite thing about christmas is always the cookies. I'm embarrassed to say I haven't made a single christmas cookie yet, but these chocolate espresso ones are on deck (or in the freezer, whatever) and I have a gingerbread project in the works. In past years I have made (and loved) these fig pinwheels, these amazing spoon cookies, english toffee, gunpowder balls (but everyone has a different name for them), chocolate gingerbread cookies, surprisingly good earl grey tea cookies, prune rugelach (could a cookie sound more geriatric? don't let that stop you -they are good), these pain in the ass, but so so awesome chestnut cream cookies, and I guess I could just go on and on, but I'm getting hungry. What cookies are you making this year? Feel free to put it off to tomorrow and just sit down and color with your kids today. Download the cookie page here (and buy the whole book here, if you like).

I made oreos this weekend. Now before you go off on the whole "how do you do it all?" rant, let me just say I don't. My husband has been off work for a few weeks now and he takes the big kids (just like that, they are big kids!) when the baby goes down for a nap. It's been absolutely amazing to have him around so much. This is how it should be: two parents taking care of the kids, maybe a nanny thrown in to take some of the pressure off. Oh to be ridiculously wealthy....some day. That comes to an abrupt end today and god knows how I'm going to deal with these three whiny, crying, poopy bundles of love all day long. I'll probably make more oreos, because I bake when I'm stressed.  Mostly because I know I can make whatever recipe you throw at me or if I can't there will be enough sugar and butter in it to be edible anyway. These cookies were most definitely edible.  I've made oreos before and they were kind of a pain in the ass--well it was a martha stewart recipe so what do you expect--but they were really good and crunchy too. These were more to the moon pie end of the scale. The cookies themselves were super easy and super delicious and I would make them on their own again (and again), but  I just wasn't down with the filing. It is technically correct: crisco and butter and sugar. I assume that's whats in real oreos (minus the butter) and that's what martha puts in her oreos, but I just can't bring myself to eat raw crisco. I'm no natural food freak, I have eaten my fair share of crisco and continue to have a can of it in the cupboard, but I can't just stick my finger in it and eat it. ugh. So next time I'll make a thick cream cheese frosting and slap that between the two cookies instead.

And there is a half done project under the cookies, see? ooop, and there's the baby. So it'll stay half done for another day.