The way the dates fall this year, and with the party on a Friday, I basically need to have everything baked by Monday the 12th, so I can pack boxes and ship them Monday and Tuesday, and then switch to party food for Friday.<\/p>\n
I have 12 kinds done, here’re the ones since Thanksgiving:<\/p>\n
[portfolio_slideshow pagerpos=disabled size=large]<\/p>\n
Key:<\/p>\n
I made the Moravian ginger thin dough before Thanksgiving and didn’t bake it until the Sunday after. I’d never let the dough sit that long before. I burned a few, and some of them seemed so thick they were almost chewy instead of crisp and delicate like they’re supposed to be. The springerle and cinnamon almond stars both came out good, although I got some anise oil from King Arthur Flour and I think I used too much in the first batch – quite strong. Last year I did something wrong with the pine nut cookies, like too much almond paste to the egg, so they were very dense. This year at first I thought they were perfect – and then decided that the first tray is actually under-cooked. But one morning this week I had one for breakfast and a Moravian ginger thin, too – and they both tasted fine.<\/p>\n
Actually, I’m doing lots of stuff this year that I haven’t before. Like trying not to stay up too late. The latest I’ve been in the kitchen baking so far has been 10:30, as opposed to past years of closing the cookie factory down at like 1:30 AM, and on a school night.\u00a0 I’m trying to make just slightly smaller batches of everything. And I’m going to try to do the nukhorns in one day – made the dough this AM, and hope to get it all shaped and baked this afternoon and evening – maybe the first late night for this cookie season. But it’s a Saturday and Mark & Belana are in Chicago for the opera, so there’s nothing to stop me from pulling a late cookie shift – except my vague desire not to hurt myself.<\/p>\n
![peanut butter sandwich cookies<\/a> as single cookies with stars on top<\/li>\nPfeffernuse<\/li>\nLinzer thumbprints<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nI made the Moravian ginger thin dough before Thanksgiving and didn’t bake it until the Sunday after. I’d never let the dough sit that long before. I burned a few, and some of them seemed so thick they were almost chewy instead of crisp and delicate like they’re supposed to be. The springerle and cinnamon almond stars both came out good, although I got some anise oil from King Arthur Flour and I think I used too much in the first batch – quite strong. Last year I did something wrong with the pine nut cookies, like too much almond paste to the egg, so they were very dense. This year at first I thought they were perfect – and then decided that the first tray is actually under-cooked. But one morning this week I had one for breakfast and a Moravian ginger thin, too – and they both tasted fine.<\/p>\nActually, I’m doing lots of stuff this year that I haven’t before. Like trying not to stay up too late. The latest I’ve been in the kitchen baking so far has been 10:30, as opposed to past years of closing the cookie factory down at like 1:30 AM, and on a school night.\u00a0 I’m trying to make just slightly smaller batches of everything. And I’m going to try to do the nukhorns in one day – made the dough this AM, and hope to get it all shaped and baked this afternoon and evening – maybe the first late night for this cookie season. But it’s a Saturday and Mark & Belana are in Chicago for the opera, so there’s nothing to stop me from pulling a late cookie shift – except my vague desire not to hurt myself.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The way the dates fall this year, and with the party on a Friday, I basically need to have everything baked by Monday the 12th, so I can pack boxes and ship them Monday and Tuesday, and then switch to party food for Friday. I have 12 kinds done, here’re the ones since Thanksgiving: [portfolio_slideshow … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1304,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[125,24],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-ds83473gmail-com","4":"post-1301","6":"format-standard","7":"has-post-thumbnail","8":"category-blogpost","9":"post_tag-break-from-tradition","10":"post_tag-cookie-season"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1301"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1321,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301\/revisions\/1321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/debslunch.com\/debslunchblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/peanutsand-400x266.jpg\"){kind=link}