Since moving to our current home, we have joined in the tradition of holiday gift giving to the neighbors (some of which have become our friends) but last year I didn't give anything because I was tired and in a funk (and 3 months pregnant). This year, I decided to do the customary cookie gift but thought I would try to make it an elegant cookie gift. I fell for these birch wood boxes at Crate and Barrel and immediately ordered a few of them to hold the cookies. We spent half the day on Christmas eve making four kinds of cookies to put into theses gift boxes. After a few tries and some burning, tossing batter out and buying new ingredients, they came out quite well. Actually even after burning a few batches and some very flat chocolate cookies as well I was happy with the outcome and my baking skills. I had originally planned to make sugar cookies (easy) and Almond chocolate cookies (because I don't really fancy chocolate chip) but after four failed tries at the Almond chocolate, I got nervous. They were too chocolatey and melting into chewy pancakes in my oven. I realized after a few tries that I really needed more flour to give some substance and once I added an additional cup of flour they began to come out better.
As expected the sugar cookies came out great but I felt we had wasted so much of the chocolate batter that we wouldn't have enough cookies to fill the six boxes. Since I had way too many chocolate chips, I decided to add brown sugar chocolate chip cookies to the boxes, figured the kids would like them. As I was skimming through the Food Network 12 days of Cookies recipes, I saw a Shortbread recipe with 4 variations, one of which was the Chai tea shortbread and since I love Shortbread and I had tons of butter, I decided to attempt making them too. I have made shortbread before using a different recipe but they came out horribly but I really wanted to try again.
I actually think what really happened was I got so delirious I just couldn't stop myself from making more and more cookies...I lined the gift boxes with a Mara-mi specialty tissue I found which coincidentally had a red wood grain pattern printed on it, call me crazy but I thought it was very cool..wood box..wood grain tissue..get it?..No..ok!
Anyway, I was a bit surprised when I started putting them together, because I ended having more than enough cookies. All the chaos turned into what I really wanted which was a nice sampler of homemade cookies.
Don't get me wrong, it was fun but this isn't going to become an everyday occurrence because baking is a crazy sport..you can't become distracted for one minute or else something burns and you must be extremely precise while simultaneously being able to improvise and having enough knowledge about your ovens nuances to keep things under control. Between rotating the pan, watching for the slight browning of the edges to develop and taking them out immediately, you must be on top of it. One thing I found though was how inaccurate the cooking times were on the food network recipes, for example, I had to cut the cooking time in half for the brown sugar chocolate chip cooies because they kept burning!
As expected the sugar cookies came out great but I felt we had wasted so much of the chocolate batter that we wouldn't have enough cookies to fill the six boxes. Since I had way too many chocolate chips, I decided to add brown sugar chocolate chip cookies to the boxes, figured the kids would like them. As I was skimming through the Food Network 12 days of Cookies recipes, I saw a Shortbread recipe with 4 variations, one of which was the Chai tea shortbread and since I love Shortbread and I had tons of butter, I decided to attempt making them too. I have made shortbread before using a different recipe but they came out horribly but I really wanted to try again.
I actually think what really happened was I got so delirious I just couldn't stop myself from making more and more cookies...I lined the gift boxes with a Mara-mi specialty tissue I found which coincidentally had a red wood grain pattern printed on it, call me crazy but I thought it was very cool..wood box..wood grain tissue..get it?..No..ok!Anyway, I was a bit surprised when I started putting them together, because I ended having more than enough cookies. All the chaos turned into what I really wanted which was a nice sampler of homemade cookies.
Don't get me wrong, it was fun but this isn't going to become an everyday occurrence because baking is a crazy sport..you can't become distracted for one minute or else something burns and you must be extremely precise while simultaneously being able to improvise and having enough knowledge about your ovens nuances to keep things under control. Between rotating the pan, watching for the slight browning of the edges to develop and taking them out immediately, you must be on top of it. One thing I found though was how inaccurate the cooking times were on the food network recipes, for example, I had to cut the cooking time in half for the brown sugar chocolate chip cooies because they kept burning!
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