Christmas Cookie Palooza!

Every year, I pick a Saturday leading up to Christmas and we bake Christmas cookies. The Norman Rockwell way. Roll out the dough, cut out the shapes, decorate, repeat. When the boys were little, it was more labor-intensive. Now that they are older, I have branched out a little. In recent years, I have started mixing it up a little and trying new recipes. Some old, some new, and usually, all delicious.

This year, the baking happened a little early. I realized on Thursday that we a)had nothing to do this Saturday, and b)had snow in the forecast. So I made sure I had all the ingredients and named today Christmas Cookie Palooza 2009.

First up: Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheels. An Alton Brown creation and new family favorite. They are kind of a pain to make, but we only make them once a year, so who's counting.

Next: the old stand-by Sugar Cookies. This the recipe I grew up making, and I even use the same cookie cutters. The angel is my favorite. A little fidgety to get the dough out sometimes, but the head and wings bake up really crisp while the body stays soft. You always get the best of both worlds in one cookie.

What's this? More stand-by sugar cookies? Fool you! These are Almond Crescents. Except in Christmas shapes. We love those Keebler Almond Crescent cookies you can only get at Christmas, so this year, I thought I'd take half of the sugar cookie dough, add almond extract, sprinkle the finished product with powdered sugar and see what happened. And oh, what happened. Delish!

Finally, chocolate bon bons. Got the recipe from the King Arther blog. They didn't spread like they should have, and I had a really hard time telling when they were done. But they were pretty tasty. One of those one-bite wonders.

What made it even better was that it snowed outside the entire time we baked. What a perfect Christmasy day!