Christmas Cookies & Friends

I know, I know, it's January!
I shouldn't be blogging about Christmas!
Well, I have a good reason.
Over Christmas, I got waylayed for a couple weeks and never had a chance to blog about this.
It was so fun, and I have such good pictures of it that I just can't skip it!

Every year, in December, my friends April & Beth make hundreds of Christmas Cookies.
They don't mess around.
On their own they would make hundreds.
Over the past couple years, they have teamed up to divide and conquer all these cookies.
This was the first year I was able to join them and pitch in.

Did I pitch in supplies, ingredients, cookie cutters, champagne, ANYTHING?
No.
I only pitched in man-power.
But, it was LOTS of manpower!
It counts, it does!

These pro-cookie-makers have some serious cookie cutters.

There were over 50, really.

From reallllly reallllly BIG to teeeeny eeeeny small...

April officially has THE VERY BEST sugar cookie recipe on the planet.

No, seriously.

If you've had them, you know.

Here are some of the BIGGUNS cooking:


and the teeensie ones:

Here's my manpower applied...

I don't mess around with decorating.

YES, of COURSE Frosty needs holly on his hat and a pipe in his mouth. Helllooo...

What train is complete without red hot hubcaps and brown wheels?

Decorate that tree!

The entire dining table was covered by the time we were done!

Sugar cookies were not the only thing on the task list of the day.

CHOCOLATE COVERED CHERRIES!!

Here they are, drying...

They had to dry out so they can get a little white blanket of goop.

Well, it doesn't start as goop, it turns into goop after 10 days of refrigeration.

And, it's that delicious goop around that little delicious cherry...

Here's Beth applying the not yet gooped goop:

YES, that's CRISCO in the background.

There is no such thing as delicious Christmas Cookies without Crisco.

I learned this principle from April.

Gooped cherries:

Then, the gooped cherries get dunked into chocolate.

Mmmmmmm.

Then, they just have to sit and look pretty for 10 days.

Kind of like me for 9 months waiting for this baby to come.

Sit & look pretty.

Check.

Then, there is the mother of all Christmas goodies.

Reindeer Food.

I've also heard it called Puppy Chow.

It's Chex cereal with melted chocolate & peanut butter shaken up,

then coated in powdered sugar.

Yessssssss.

It's the most delicious thing ever. No joke.

I hope you enjoyed making Christmas cookies,

or eating Christmas cookies,

or just looking at Christmas cookies since you were dieting,

this Christmas season.

Happy New Year!