Oh dear. It's begun. Today is officially the start of my Christmas Baking Season. I'm a little late. The plan had been to prepare logs of cookie dough a week ago and freeze it, ready to slice & bake closer to Christmas. Was anyone else totally thrown off by Christmas landing on a Sunday?
When my mom was still alive she did most of the Christmas shopping. I bought a few presents- for friends, my closest cousin, whoever I picked in the gift exchange- but for all the million aunts, uncles & cousins I was happy to let mom buy gifts and I'd fill out tags saying they were from the whole family.
Since she passed away (this will be our 3rd Christmas without her), I've taken on a lot of that role. The first year I did everything she would have- bought every gift, cooked every dish- on top of my own baking & gift buying. I even recreated her recipes (most of which she'd never taught me). Last year we divided the work up, with me baking for all the couples & buying for all the singles, my sister buying for the teen/little girls and dad buying for the teen/little boys.
I'm scaling back my baking this year, partly because it's getting close to Christmas and I'm just starting and partly because it got expensive. So this year I'm sticking with very homey, not fancy stuff I know people really liked last year. Only two are dipped in chocolate (which is a time consuming process), so things should go much faster this year.
Are you doing any holiday baking? What are your favorite recipes?
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