Consolidated "Christmas Baking" thread

Snickerdoodles. I love vanilla and cinnamon and have a heavy pour when it comes to the vanilla in the recipe.

Making these has become a father/daughter tradition in my household.

i highly second you in this..I'm highly addicted to the taste of these cookies. I make these all-year round, not just during the holidays. ^

I'm in, too!

Sugar cookies (with white frosting and red/ green sprinkles) -- I'm pretty old school. Spritz cookies (almond flavor) are fun, too, but we must have had a ghetto-@ss press, because those things never really looked very pretty when we made them... they tasted okay, though!

I would love this! Count me in.

Having been to lalala's cookie party in the past, I would so TOTALLY fly up to SEA to do a cookie exchange.

Alas, I just moved 48 hours ago and I'm trying to unearth all my kitchen supplies from boxes - no homemade cookies (or a tree) for me this year. I might just have to do Christmas in January to make up for the loss as I seem to be the only one in my family who bakes anymore.

Got a plate of fruitcake cookies from the lady across the street. So far none of us has liked them. Gramma BamaVol made some awesome Christmas cookies back in the day. One had a mint chocolate wafer buried in the center. My all time favorite.

Hamentashen

Also like...my mother-in-law's shortbread christmas wreaths, merangue (made with egg whites, sugar, chopped walnuts, and choc chips), and jewel cookies (a shortbread-like cookie rolled in nuts and filled with jelly).

Oh...and I also like the one's with a Rollo baked in the center. A co-worker of mine makes them each year! Yum!

When I was small holiday cookies consisted principally of slice-and-bake sugar cookies decorated with colored sugar or dipped in dark chocolate. Chocolate helped the taste but even as a kid I could tell they weren't great. Things got more interesting over time as my mom's cooking skills improved and she started trying recipes from women's magazines. Thumbprint cookies--think little Linzer morsels--still make the cut; the recipe for bourbon balls did not. As I learned how to cook I started trying exotic foreign recipes with names I could barely pronounce, even got a spritz gun to make extruded butter cookies (yummy, but not worth the effort in the space I have).

Then one year I tried a recipe for chocolate truffles, and over the years really went off the deep end with chocolate making, making a lot of people very happy. Sadly, time and travel mean no fun with chocolate for the second year in a row, so for the first time in years I'm doing a few batches of cookies to give away. No time for laboriously hand-formed and decorated masterpieces, just going for taste. With planning the prep can be squeezed into odd bits of time, unlike chocolate making.

Right now there's a pan of fruitcake bars in the oven (first time I've tried the recipe but it looks great). I may do a batch of biscotti--pistachio-cherry should look festive. Chocolate is always appropriate so the brownie-recipe-made-into-slice-and-bake-cookies will be included.

What are your traditional cookies? What are your favorites? Two separate categories which may or may not overlap...

My holiday baking has been sporadic at best, but when I DO bake, I do traditional tollhouse (with nuts!), 7 layer bars, and pecan sandies, (also known as russian tea cakes or mexican wedding cakes), and occasionally biscotti.

I love to eat a good sugar cookie, but those seem to elude my baking abilities.

I love love love chocolate crinkle cookies!

Madeleines top the list. (I think we have 6 pans).

Toll House (some with walnuts, some with pecans), Bourbon Balls, Butter Nut Balls, Lace Cookies and various Brownies and Fudge are in the running. Somewhere I have an old Danish cookbook with incredible recipes.

Another favorite is Almond cake (recipe on pkg of almond paste), baked in a flan pan, the indented part then filled with fresh berries and freshly whipped cream.

Champagne, of course negates *all* the butter, so Cheers!!

And we adore the people who send us Leonidas chocolates, Yoku Moku cookies and this year-- The Fourteener from Telluride Truffle.

http://www.telluridetruffle.com/truffles_store.html

Tis the season for making cookies. However, I have gotten to a point where my favorite goodie is Christmas bark. It is unbelievably good!

My favorites are chocolate crinkle cookies and they are pretty easy to make.

Every year my officemates take turns bringing cookies every day in December up until Christmas. It is great to see what everyone likes to make. Of course by Christmas we are all pretty sick of cookies, not to mention several pounds heavier. I can't wait for the day my one friend brings in her heavenly almond roca.

one of the Haley grandkids (of Brown and Haley/Almond Roca fame) used to be one of the managers here, and we always had huges containers of factory seconds in the office at Christmastime. Almond Roca is like crack to me.

When I bake, I usually make bar-style cookies - takes very little time. Some drop cookie recipes I make into bar cookies, e.g. Toll House Bars, Scotch-Oatmeal bars. Of course, I don't follow the recipe exactly - on anything I make/bake - and they usually turn out fine.