holi-daze 2025: xmas prep, phase 1
Dec. 17th, 2025 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skye_writerSo it's a week til Xmas. I have managed to get gifts for all the kiddos, which leaves the gifts for the adults. The last few years, I've opted to bake cookies and treats for everyone, rather than trying to buy presents and get everything shipped here in time and so on.
So.
I've got cookies to bake and treats to make, and I fear I may have bitten off more than I can chew.
For starters, and utterly unrelated to my gift-baking, Mom has a work potluck on Friday. It's a finger foods, appetizers, and desserts potluck, and Mom offered to bring chocolate cake. She uses her grandmother's recipe, which is very tasty; she made it for Younger Niece's birthday a couple years ago. Also a couple years ago, I made a chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream to put on said cake, which made the whole ensemble a huge hit.
I offered once again to make the Swiss meringue buttercream for the potluck cake. We are going to bake the cake tonight, and then tomorrow I will make the buttercream, and Mom will frost the cake with it, and take it to work on Friday and hurrah. It will probably take a while to make the buttercream (egg whites and I do not get along sometimes), but hopefully it'll all turn out all right.
Which brings me to my holiday baking efforts. My initial plan was to bake Mexican wedding cookies (from a cookbook I got a few years ago), and make some peppermint bark, and be done with it. Then I got to thinking about making something else... maybe some orange spice shortbread? I had a recipe for my Celtic knot shortbread pan, but I wasn't sure how to translate that to a more traditional cookie. To the internet!
I found a recipe for cutout shortbread cookies, with an orange spice variation, as well as a separate orange glaze recipe for shortbread cookies. Success! And then I got to thinking about the fact that there are always more cookies than fit into the adults' gift boxes. And I realized I did not have a non-spiced cookie on offer, should any of the kiddos want a cookie. This is important because Younger Niece does not like cinnamon, and cinnamon is in both the cookie recipes.
(This is a long-standing dislike on Younger Niece's part. She was maybe 1 or 1.5 years old when we gave her a cinnamon applesauce pouch for breakfast one morning. She refused to eat it. It might have happened once or twice more until I figured out that she was not partial to cinnamon, and her dislike has continued ever since. So I like to keep dessert options open for her on holidays; we've started getting a chocolate silk pie for her on Thanksgiving, for example. She's been willing to try things with cinnamon, too, just to see if her taste buds have changed enough to remove the dislike, but to no avail.)
So I decided I could make another batch of the cutout shortbread cookies without the orange spice variation, and then there would be cookies for everyone!!
Unfortunately, now my baking schedule for the next week looks like this:
I'm gonna be BUSY.
I'm debating whether to make the peppermint bark tomorrow, maybe? I'm not planning to make the buttercream until the evening, mostly so Mom can use it to ice the cake right away, and I don't have to worry about storing it in the fridge or whatever until she gets home from work. Peppermint bark is pretty simple, honestly, and it wouldn't take too much time to put together.
I don't know. I'll keep you all posted on the results of my efforts, I guess!!
So.
I've got cookies to bake and treats to make, and I fear I may have bitten off more than I can chew.
For starters, and utterly unrelated to my gift-baking, Mom has a work potluck on Friday. It's a finger foods, appetizers, and desserts potluck, and Mom offered to bring chocolate cake. She uses her grandmother's recipe, which is very tasty; she made it for Younger Niece's birthday a couple years ago. Also a couple years ago, I made a chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream to put on said cake, which made the whole ensemble a huge hit.
I offered once again to make the Swiss meringue buttercream for the potluck cake. We are going to bake the cake tonight, and then tomorrow I will make the buttercream, and Mom will frost the cake with it, and take it to work on Friday and hurrah. It will probably take a while to make the buttercream (egg whites and I do not get along sometimes), but hopefully it'll all turn out all right.
Which brings me to my holiday baking efforts. My initial plan was to bake Mexican wedding cookies (from a cookbook I got a few years ago), and make some peppermint bark, and be done with it. Then I got to thinking about making something else... maybe some orange spice shortbread? I had a recipe for my Celtic knot shortbread pan, but I wasn't sure how to translate that to a more traditional cookie. To the internet!
I found a recipe for cutout shortbread cookies, with an orange spice variation, as well as a separate orange glaze recipe for shortbread cookies. Success! And then I got to thinking about the fact that there are always more cookies than fit into the adults' gift boxes. And I realized I did not have a non-spiced cookie on offer, should any of the kiddos want a cookie. This is important because Younger Niece does not like cinnamon, and cinnamon is in both the cookie recipes.
(This is a long-standing dislike on Younger Niece's part. She was maybe 1 or 1.5 years old when we gave her a cinnamon applesauce pouch for breakfast one morning. She refused to eat it. It might have happened once or twice more until I figured out that she was not partial to cinnamon, and her dislike has continued ever since. So I like to keep dessert options open for her on holidays; we've started getting a chocolate silk pie for her on Thanksgiving, for example. She's been willing to try things with cinnamon, too, just to see if her taste buds have changed enough to remove the dislike, but to no avail.)
So I decided I could make another batch of the cutout shortbread cookies without the orange spice variation, and then there would be cookies for everyone!!
Unfortunately, now my baking schedule for the next week looks like this:
- December 17: help Mom bake chocolate cake
- December 18: make chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream for chocolate cake
- December 19: make peppermint bark
- December 20: make plain shortbread cookies
- December 21: make orange spice shortbread cookies; decorate plain shortbread with simple glaze
- December 22: make Mexican wedding cookies; decorate orange spice shortbread with orange glaze
- December 23: assemble gift boxes with all treats
I'm gonna be BUSY.
I'm debating whether to make the peppermint bark tomorrow, maybe? I'm not planning to make the buttercream until the evening, mostly so Mom can use it to ice the cake right away, and I don't have to worry about storing it in the fridge or whatever until she gets home from work. Peppermint bark is pretty simple, honestly, and it wouldn't take too much time to put together.
I don't know. I'll keep you all posted on the results of my efforts, I guess!!
