Christmas Cookie Crazy

Ah! I baked a ton today! I have never baked so much in my life. It was fun though! As soon as I got into the zone, it was really easy.

It didn't start out well. I slept in and wanted to keep sleeping, but drug myself up to get to work. I did make breakfast and took a moment to eat so I wasn't hungry and have low blood sugar. Then I started making the dough for the gingerbread men. First, I realized I would have to refrigerate basically all the cookie dough for 1-4 hours, and I was not anticipating that! But that was ok, it was only 9am. I was fine until I got to the baking powder... which I thought I had but didn't.

Ugh.

So I climbed in the car with Dexter in tow to the commissary (thank god it's right there) and ran inside to get some baking powder! Once I got home I made all the dough for the 6 types of cookies I was making (sugar cookies, stained glass sugar cookies, peanut butter blossoms, peanut butter cup tarts, gingerbread men and snickerdoodles).

This is what my kitchen looked like as I made everything. It was a mess and I had to have fortifications so the kitty wouldn't jump on the island!:

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Close to lunch time the first batch went in: the peanut butter blossoms, Brandon's favorite. Here they are finished:

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Then I made the snickerdoodles, since they were fairly easy to do, and then on to the sugar cookies, which took forever since I had so many!! I also did the stained glass cookies. Here they are:

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After that were the peanut butter cup tarts, made in a muffin pan. They looked good!:

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Finally, I made the gingerbread men. It was hard at first because the dough was solid, I thought I did something wrong. But I worked the dough a bit and it loosened up and I was able to make the cookies. I sure was tired, but they turned out well:

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I'm glad I did all this! I had Christmas music playing the whole time and Dexter was keeping himself entertained outside (he refused to come inside, silly dog). I had a few difficulties but I did well. Of course, I have a whole load of cookies, so I'm going to be sharing them with neighbors and Brandon's platoon. :) We still have to decorate them, but that will be for another day when Brandon is home.

Now the next Christmas challenge... making Christmas dinner for Brandon and I. AH!