Merry Christmas Cookies!

There comes a time every Christmas season, when all the gifts and bought and wrapped (I finished up my last knitting gift today 🙂 

I have finally finished baking for Christmas,

– Toffee Bars – that I make every year at Christmas

– Sugar Cookies frosted with vanilla candy melts and a Peppermint Hershey’s Kiss

– Pie Crust cookies filled with my homemade strawberry preserves and dusted with sanding sugar

I wasn’t the only one in our house baking for Christmas. Our holiday tradition includes baking Christmas cookies on the “Eve of the Christmas Eve” as my oldest daughter, Brittney always says.  She now has a home of her own now, but we still continue our tradition with our younger children.

I love taking pictures of the kids making cookies and the joy on their faces as they anticipate Santa coming and eating their cookies….

Gracie and Kai in 2005.  (It was Kai’s first Christmas since we adopted him.  Gracie has always had a tendency to hold his ear now and then – not sure why 😉

Christmas 2007

Now, Kai and Gracie are getting older, but they still love to bake Christmas cookies, as does their older sisters, Rachele and Ruthie.

This year’s Christmas cookie baking day brought some new participants….

7 kids, cookie dough, frosting and sprinkles….the perfect combination.

My younger sister just moved here from California and they live just down the street from us.  So my two nephews and niece, Sofie (also adopted from China as my 3 youngest), joined us.

My daughter, Rachele, rolled out the dough, but the kids did all the other work on their own…

Ruthie had fun making stripes with the royal icing.

My sister stopped by to help us frost the cookies.

My husband and son were the official taste testers (pardon the messy kitchen – I seriously haven’t had time to clean)

Checking out some of the finished cookies.

Here are more….

The aftermath…..

You know what?

I think the enjoyment you get out of making Christmas cookies is directly proportional to the bigger the mess afterward, don’t you?

I use a special recipe for my sugar cookies that stays chewy and moist….

1 (17 oz) package sugar cookie mix

4 oz cream cheese (softened)

1 egg

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon vanilla


Add all ingredients and mix together (the dough will be thick).

Roll out to 1/4″ thickness on floured surface and start using your cookie cutters (I find it helps to dip my cookie cutters in flour before cutting into the dough).


Bake at 350 degrees F for approximately 10 minutes.

Decorate with icing and lots of sprinkles 🙂

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I wish for you all a very

Merry

Christmas!

Cookies and Sugar Cone Christmas Trees

Noelle Johnson, aka, 'AZ Plant Lady' is a author, horticulturist, and landscape consultant who helps people learn how to create, grow, and maintain beautiful desert gardens that thrive in a hot, dry climate. She does this through her consulting services, her online class Desert Gardening 101, and her monthly membership club, Through the Garden Gate. As she likes to tell desert-dwellers, "Gardening in the desert isn't hard, but it is different."