This time of year my house smells like a bakery with cookies, breads and other treats coming out of my oven to be shared with family, friends, neighbors, and the folks that bring and take away things like the postman and trash collectors. I just finished baking 8 dozen large chocolate chip and pecan cookies to start putting a dent in the 20+ dozen I generally make this time of year.
I'll also fix small loaves of banana/nut bread and some homemade herb breads to hand out as Christmas approaches. My wife comes home from work in the afternoons and plays "Guess what was in the oven today". The house sure smells great though. Between the sweets baking and the Christmas tree aroma, it's all smelling like the holidays.
I know we have a bunch of talented cooks among us, so what is everyone else cooking up this time of year?????
LOL, my wife came home from work yesterday and smelled the cookies as soon as she came in the door. She went into the kitchen and I could hear her rustling around in there and she came into the living room with a shopping bag full of smaller bags filled with cookies for her fellow employees and asked if I planned on making more. So, 8 dozen accounted for so far and it's back to the kitchen later today to bake more.lakngulf wrote:Can I send my mailing address? Sounds great. Your descriptions were so good I could almost smell them from here.
imafan26 wrote:I did cookies a couple of times for Christmas gifts. After each time I said never again. It was a lot of hard work. It would be a fun thing to do with kids, but I was doing it by myself over a period of a couple of weeks while working full time.
I knocked out another 8 dozen earlier today and you're right, that dough is a tough one to mix with all the chocolate chips, pecans and relatively dry dough.
Then to do it all by hand without the aid of a mixer makes it a bit of a challenge, but the end results are soooo good that it's worth it. I still have at least 1 more batch of 8 dozen to make tomorrow since these will likely go out sometime today.
Speaking of kids----when my stepdaughter was about 9 we had a neighbor lady who was in her late 50's and she had a few of the neighborhood kids over to bake cookies. These kids had a ball and were pretty much covered in flour and powdered sugar by the time they were done a few hours later. I'm betting it took much longer for her to clean her kitchen after that than it did to make, and bake all the cookies. But those kids had a ball.
-
pepperhead212
- Super Green Thumb
- Posts: 2878
- Joined: Wed Oct 15, 2014 1:52 pm
- Location: Woodbury NJ Zone 7a/7b
I used to bake 3-4 thousand cookies every year at this time. Most people got cookies from me, and looked forward to them every year. Most of the people are no longer here - moved away or passed away - so I only make a few hundred now. I always make a lot of logs of dough, and freeze them, then I slice them, and helpers load and unload them. It helps to have a commercial oven! lol
Wow, that's a lot of cookies and kitchen time. I don't keep tabs on what it costs to make the couple hundred I make every year, but between the semi-sweet chocolate, pecans, flour, oatmeal, sugars, butter and eggs, it is still a very good bargain for homemade cookies that most have said are far superior to anything they get in the market. Besides, I think folks truly enjoy getting things made by the gift giver. I certainly know I do.pepperhead212 wrote:I used to bake 3-4 thousand cookies every year at this time. Most people got cookies from me, and looked forward to them every year. Most of the people are no longer here - moved away or passed away - so I only make a few hundred now. I always make a lot of logs of dough, and freeze them, then I slice them, and helpers load and unload them. It helps to have a commercial oven! lol
Your situation is similar to mine with folks that have moved away or passed. Hurricane Katrina moved a lot of my friends to other parts of the country that swore to not return and possibly face that again, and old age and disease has removed several close friends over the years. And at age 64, it ain't going to get any better I do believe.
My nephew liked peanut butter cookies, but only the ones I made with Adam's old fashiones peanut butter. It was hard to stir the peanut and oil. He knew the difference between those and Skippy.
I would have needed an industrial mixer for thousands. My mixer couldn't really handle the thicker cookie dough and all I did in the mixer was creaming and the rest was done by hand. I broke a few spoons mixing batter. I only did a couple of hundred cookies.
I would have needed an industrial mixer for thousands. My mixer couldn't really handle the thicker cookie dough and all I did in the mixer was creaming and the rest was done by hand. I broke a few spoons mixing batter. I only did a couple of hundred cookies.
My wife has dozens of candy molds that she uses for the different holidays. For Christmas she has trees, wreaths, ornaments, snowmen, presents with bows, etc. that she uses milk chocolate and sometimes nuts to fill them and then give them out as treats.
Her co-workers love it when she comes in this time of year with homemade cookies and candy. She works in an office with over 20 co-workers and most of them women. To say most of them have a sweet tooth is an understatement. At least once a month I'll bake banana/nut bread and send two loaves for her to put in the break room for anyone to eat and it is gone by lunch time. I've probably baked over 100 loaves of that stuff and never keep one at home-----it is addictive and I don't need the calories.
Her co-workers love it when she comes in this time of year with homemade cookies and candy. She works in an office with over 20 co-workers and most of them women. To say most of them have a sweet tooth is an understatement. At least once a month I'll bake banana/nut bread and send two loaves for her to put in the break room for anyone to eat and it is gone by lunch time. I've probably baked over 100 loaves of that stuff and never keep one at home-----it is addictive and I don't need the calories.
I haven't made a sugar cookie in years. It brings back memories. I think I still have some of the molds. I just have not used them in years.
I usually do batter mixes peanut butter, Jan Hagel, almond cookies, shortbread, toll house, chip cookies, bar cookies, and it has been a very long time, but I used to make Chinese Pretzels.
I usually do batter mixes peanut butter, Jan Hagel, almond cookies, shortbread, toll house, chip cookies, bar cookies, and it has been a very long time, but I used to make Chinese Pretzels.
This is the reason I stayed out of this thread until today: Merry Christmas!gumbo2176 wrote:...never keep one at home-----it is addictive and I don't need the calories.
Yesterday, I baked a couple of pumpkin pies. My grandmother passed away on Thanksgiving morning, way back in the 1950's. We did not celebrate Thanksgiving for several years. When Mom was willing to begin again, my contribution was to make pumpkin pies. I have continued that almost without a miss for both Thanksgiving and Christmas ever since.
I have put some emphasis on growing winter squash because of those pies. I also grow Jack o'Lantern pumpkins because, Halloween! Extra pumpkins have given me something of a challenge in the kitchen. I have found that they are a good deal less appropriate for pie so I don't use them there. Today, I will make Half Moon Bay pumpkin bread for the second time since the harvest ended.
There may have been a time when I used winter squash but I'm not sure. I've been making pumpkin bread a few years and it's a good use for Jack o'Lantern pumpkins! A large one will make 9 loaves. Yikes!
The punkin has already been roasted and the pulp scraped from the skin. Sometime before the Christmas roast comes out of or goes into the oven, I will slide 3 loafpans in there. Yeah, I need to determine the dimensions of that roast and time it will be in there.
Two loaves will be given away. They seem popular! For brunch, we are finishing the apple upsidedown cake that I baked last week. I think there are a few slices of Carrot bread still on the counter but the last of the full loaves was Thursday gift. Thankfully, the orange sugar cookies are already gone!
Steve