oh tannanbaum

 A giant rain storm is bearing down on us, due to hit tonight and carry on until Tuesday. Hopefully it stays above freezing otherwise we might get socked in!

Friday started early in the morning with a trip to Mom & Dad's for a visit and shopping at Costco. After her few things from Costco was unloaded at Mom's, we zoomed home, with a stop for another few plastic cookie bins! 

It was a beautiful day on Friday, so, with two giant bins of gingerbread, a bag of icing sugar, a bag of jujubes and jellybeans, I made the trek to Kirsten's for a girls night filled with sugar, food colouring, and dangerous scissors! Oh tannenbaum, oh tannenbaum… dozens of gingerbread trees waiting to get glazed with weirdly green icing and decorated with jujubes and jellybeans…

We took care of ponies etc, and then with freshly washed hands, spread parchment over the huge kitchen island, a snowy landscape for the forest of cookies waiting to become Christmas trees. Food colouring and icing sugar came together to make a colourful glue! The jujubes were meant to be baubles on the trees but full size they overwhelmed the gingerbread - they needed to be smaller… Kirsten took the scissors away from me after I cut not only a jujube but the fleshy bit of my finger… the cut from last week is just about healed… 

It was another sunny day Saturday! I headed home in the morning after a wake up coffee. I had a recipe of serinakakers and another of chocolate crinkle cookies chilling in the fridge that I wanted to bake.

Today my aim was to get the ‘topsy turveys’ done (aka Chinese Chews) and some other kind to make a total of six varieties… I finally settled on snickerdoodles - we need some cinnamon in the cookie jar! By 2:30 two trays of topsy's were baked and rolled in powdered sugar, as well as two batches of snickerdoodles (6 dozen!). I think that's it. I've gone through countless pounds of butter, a blizzard of flour, and a mountain of sugar. Well… I might try making some meringue cookies next week if I get a spare day.

My new baking trays and cooling racks arrived today right after I put away the last of the baking! Great timing :-/

Awesome!

“an easy drive to Kirsten's”

“laughing at the mess we made - icing everywhere”

“more and more cookies”

“two sunny days!!!”

“so much Christmas music”