Ready?

I spent all day yesterday baking cookies. Now that they're done, I am officially ready for this year's holiday season. I've got all my shopping done. The wreath is on the front door. And now the cookies are baked and being distributed to (hopefully) grateful teachers even as I write this.

As always, I baked some old favorites — chocolate mint cookies (recipe below), although this year I didn't make my rugelah (it's a lot of work and I just didn't feel like it this year). And I tried some new ones — one worked, one sort of did and one was a complete fail.

The one that worked was a recipe from Mary Lenaburg who always has the most sinful, delicious recipes on her blog, Passionate Perseverance. This one was for homemade oreos (that's Mary's picture I stole) and these are just, well, amazing would be understating how good these are. Click the link and it'll take you to that recipe, then, after you've copied it, look around at all of the other wonderful things she has there — you won't be sorry!

The cookie that didn't quite work and the one that didn't at all were healthier cookies. Yes, I know, it's silly of me to try to make healthier cookies at this time of year, but my conscience always makes me try. One was a healthier short bread cookie — they turned out dry and bland. And the other one which was a complete fail I knew from the minute I looked at the recipe that it wouldn't work, but, you know, I just had to try it anyway, didn't I? It was for chocolate meringues with nothing in them but egg whites, sugar and melted chocolate chips. It sounded so simple and so good, but don't you usually have to put cream of tartar into meringues? I think you do and I think that whoever wrote this recipe (I can't even remember where I found it, or if I did, I wouldn't be mean and say so) just forgot to put it in. I blended up the egg whites, added the sugar, blended, added the chocolate, blended, then dropped teaspoons of the liquid onto my lined baking sheet. It just didn't seem right. It was liquid! And that's just what I got, nothing but dried up puddles of this sweetened egg white. You need that cream of tartar to bind them together.

And here is where I will give a nod to my husband who sees a metaphor for writing in Everything! Yes, you need more than sweetness and light in your novel for it to rise, be fun and yummy — for it to work. You need that binder, that conflict, that something to bind everything together to make your novel, or your cookie, work.

Luckily, I had some frozen cookie dough I had made a few months ago in my freezer to make up for the loss of the meringues. I always have a back-up plan, just in case. Now, let's see how we can apply that to writing?

I hope everyone has a very happy holiday season!

Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

(taken from the Washington Post, December 2008)

Note: dough must refrigerate at least 2 hours before rolling and baking.

1 1/2 cups flour

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

Mix these together in a medium sized bowl.

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter (at room temperature)

Mix with hand-mixer until smooth. Add

3/4 tsp peppermint oil (it says not to use extract, but I always do and it works fine)

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup sugar (added a little at a time).

1 large egg

When this is all blended well. Add the flour/cocoa mixture. Dough will be sticky. Divide it in half. Form each half into a ball and wrap with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for a few hours.

They say to make logs with the dough then cut circles and bake. I like to roll out the dough and cut out pretty little stars.

Bake in 350 degree oven for 14 minutes.  Cool on wire rack.

Optional — combine powdered sugar with a little (very, very little) water and a drop of peppermint extract to make a drizzling icing. Dip a fork into the icing and drizzle decoratively over the cookies.  Enjoy or make someone else very happy by giving them as a pretty gift.