It's All About The Cookies

This weekend I decided to make Christmas cookies.  Never really made them before, but I thought it would be good to do as it might help us get in the holiday spirit.  Especially since it's around 65 degrees here.  In the past years Andy and I made sugar cookies, well maybe Andy made them and I just assisted.  This time we did not make sugar cookies, but instead we made peanut butter blossoms, crunchy peanut butter balls and chocolate pretzel sticks...and I was the sole cookie maker this time.

We fired up the Christmas music and started with the peanut butter blossoms.

Huge bonus here is that we got to use items from our wedding registry just like the Crate & Barrel baking bowl above.

The peanut butter blossoms are usually made with Hershey kisses on top, but I learned a trick from my mother-in-law as she uses dove chocolates instead.  She makes some VERY YUMMY blossoms and so I decided to go for the dove chocolates instead of the kisses.  My first batch of cookies turned out HUGE.  The dove chocolate practically got lost in the dough.

Apparently my balls were overly large.  After the first batch I got the rest of the dough balls correct, but since my first batch was so large the recipe didn't make as many as it said.  Good thing my mother-in-law sent down a container of them as they are oh so yummy. 

Next up we made crunchy peanut butter balls.  These are my absolute favorite holiday cookie/candy.  I was nervous that they wouldn't turn out because I really didn't want to be disappointed in my cookie making, but they turned out just fabulous.  The best thing about these is that they are pretty easy to make.

Then we made chocolate covered pretzel rods per Andy's request.  He really wanted these so we made sure to make them.  He really didn't think it was necessary to pick up the sprinkles at the store, but I thought if we are going to make them then we will make them the right way and festive.

We had a great time making Christmas cookies together on Saturday.  While the baking was going on Andy came across one of my secret santa gifts from work...a penguin and a santa candle.  Like a little kid he thought it would be fun to light the candles to see which burned faster.  I decided to join in and we both bet on Santa burning faster; however, we were both wrong and the penguin won.

Santa is ahead, but he didn't win.

This was so much fun with Christmas music in the background that I might just make it an annual tradition.