Cookies make great gifts because people love them so much, and hardly anyone has time to bake anymore. I have the time, so I do bake like a fiend for several days. I have never had anyone ask me not to give them cookies next year - in fact, I get plenty of little hints and comments from folks from Thanksgiving on, wondering and hoping I will still have time to make and share more cookies. LOL So every year I go on a marathon baking spree, and currently I am making 7 kinds of cookies. If you multiply that by the 4-5 dozen of each kind, you can see why it takes me three days to bake. And with the gingerbread, they must be decorated after they have cooled completely, and the surface must be dry, so there is at least 1-2 more days involved there. It is a labor of love, but it is exhausting. I do it every year anyway, just because I can.
The baking starts out with rolling and cutting the dough to shape and re-rolling the trimmings. The cookies are baked, cooled and they go into boxes until I have them all done. The batch below was actually toward the end, when the reindeer cutter, which had popped its tack weld last year, came home to me repaired. That is a favorite that I found at a yard sale along with the 'chick' which I call my partridge in a pear tree. They are not so much antique as unusual. The ovals were just the end of the dough pieces, rolled out freeform.
Lee took a couple of the next pictures over my shoulder as I worked. Yep, that's me, doing my thing. It took me two sessions to decorate the gingerbread cookies because I made extra this year. I'll admit I am not great frosting artist and I use the commercial squeeze tubes and mostly writing tips to lay on the color. But I do add some detail wherever I can, so a few sprinkles and jimmies get called into service. I want them colorful and themed for the season. I have favorite cutters I use every year, and buy new ones periodically. I have two sweater size plastic tubs full of cookie cutters. I also make a vanilla rolled cookie, and some are designated for them.
One trick I've learned for laying in the detail sprinkles is to dip the tip of a toothpick into the color of frosting I am currently decorating with and then pick the little dots up out of their containers one or a few at a time. The little candies stick well to the frosting and when it hardens (usually overnight) they stay put. Toothpicks also help with a line of decoration frosting that lays wrong by redirecting it without squishing it out of shape. And they do some fancy designs. You will see more of that in further pics.
For cookie decorating I pull out all my sheets and trays - another reason to have most of the baking done by then. The cookies are thick with frosting and that needs an overnight period to dry and firm up. Then they can be stacked again. The idea is to just give some detail and indication of what the cutout is. We've found the frosting is a necessity, as it really enhances the taste of the cookies. Might as well be pretty too.
The elephant and wreath cutters were also in that original yard sale batch. I would guess they are at least 25 years old.
Below is how I stack them to dry, and why I prefer similarly sized trays and sheets with a lip. When I am done for the night, they get completely covered with clean old towels or sheets over a big cooling rack. I put another rack over the top to protect them, and discourage my ever-curious cats from investigating what is underneath. In spite of my primitive decorations, don't they look pretty? The snowflake is a new one for this year, and I have been experimenting with how to decorate it. It's true what they say, no two are alike. You can just see some of the plastic storage boxes off to the right.
The individual sheets are fun to look at too. I like to add homey little details to the houses, having lived in New England all of my life. The lighthouse was a gift cutter from my neighbors Bob & Shelly, who are avid boaters and fishers. They gave me a lobster cutter too. They look forward to cookies every year. *w*
I have been collecting different house shapes for a few years now. The rocking horse and the tree were also from that yard sale batch. I think that star might have been too, though I have several stars. This particular Santa is new this year, I got it 75% off in January last year. The stocking is older too, I think that was from a flea market.
The candy cane cutter came from the same flea market deal as the stocking. The small gingerbread boy was from Goodwill this fall, the Santa face, ornament and present are all new but purchased after the holiday when they were discounted. I have bought multiple sets of the plastic frosting tips for decorating so I can have a lot of colors going at once, but I also have some of the name brand metal decorator tips and sleeves that will fit certain tubes. Someday I will take the time to mix my own royal icing, I just didn't bother this year because I had so much of the squeeze tube stuff left and found more at a discount store. BTW, only buy the tube frosting and not the gel or the canned stuff for this type of work, as neither one of the others will harden and they get too messy.
A different reindeer, one that I bought to replace my old one in case it proved to be unrepairable. Got the snowman the same day. The sailboat is a couple years old now, I do them for Bob & Shelly. The houses are about the same age. The pig and old world Santa were also in that original yard sale bunch. For years I didn't use the Santa because I could not figure out what is was! It looked like either a skinny upright penguin or a weird sleigh. You can see that without the details, the shape is not easy to discern. But one year I looked at it and said, "Oh, it's St. Nick!" and worked out a design I follow every year. You just have to frost these, they look best that way.
The train engine is new, purchased this year for grandson Ben, who loves all things blue and pertaining to Thomas the Tank Engine. We saved every one of those for him.
Found the holly leaf a few seasons back, and originally used it for the sugar cookies. I like it better this way. The dots on the wreaths and trees I added to the house cookies are laid-in sprinkles. The rest is frosting.
There's my partridges! I do them and the elephants and reindeer the same every year, and always in white. I just noticed some of the snowmen don't have carrot noses. I can't remember if I fixed that...
A different star and the lobsters, I usually make a couple of those. This was the end of one baking batch. It is always a relief to know you are done. Squeezing those tubes and keeping the line going gets harder as they empty, and I have arthritis in both hands. I use big wide elastic bands (like you get on bundled broccoli or asparagus) to fold the tubes over and help keep the air out, but it is still tough. Good thing I like doing this, it's a lot of work!
Actually I enjoy seeing people's eyes 'pop' when they get their cookies. I've been told they are too pretty to eat, yet they always get eaten. I have my fans at this time of year. *w*
Below are the last batch of cookies baked, all frosted in the same night since I just had a few to do. For the ovals I had opened up the last two empty tubes of white frosting and smeared it on with a spreader. I gave them to my sons that evening, a reminder of the days when they were little boys who helped mommy make Christmas kitchen magic. Brian decorated a few cookies himself this year, and he said never realized how hard it is to make them look good. He has a lot of respect for me for what I do now, because his contribution was just a token portion of what got done.
BTW, that chromed steel tray is not what they got baked on, it is an old bottom tray to my long since defunct Farberware portable convection oven. When we had to get rid of it after many years of service, I kept the tray and the oven rack, which I also still use as an auxillary cooling rack, since it has 4 little wire bump 'feet' that fitted into the slots you see on the ends of the tray. I saved a heavy chromed round rack from my Amana micro/convection oven too, because that has tall legs with flat disc 'feet' so that it sits very secure and is great for cooling stockpots. I may be more than a bit eccentric but I won't toss out anything that can be repurposed. The more I can find uses for these things, the less likely they are to wind up in a landfill. I would at least consider donating them to a thrift shop, where someone else might have a use for them.
It takes time, patience, and resources to do baking on this scale, and I know most people don't have a lot of either. What could be doable and affordably fun is to start a Christmas cookie exchange with several friends, and then make up multiple batches of one kind of cookie to trade to others for they have done. You have to make sure that everyone does a different type of cookie so that there is some variety. And I'd tend to stay away from cookies like chocolate chip or oatmeal that most people do whenever they bother to bake, and save certain recipes strictly for the holidays. You also want to think about where your cookies will be stored, and how well they will transport if you are going to share them. I have mailed cookies to Florida with good results, and will discuss in another post how to pack them for that.
For me this is all about making memories. Long after the gifts are forgotten and the cards put away, people will still be talking about the cookies and fudge I made and shared with them. It's part of my holiday tradition, and the couple years I was unable to do that, it just didn't feel the same. I am proud that this year, except for Roger's cookies (which he just received yesterday) everyone got their cookies before or at least by Christmas Eve. And what we kept for ourselves is almost gone. Ho, ho, ho!!!!
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