Holiday Cookies

Winter and Christmas especially are my favorite times to bake. There’s something heartwarming about dancing to music in the kitchen with the fire going or watching the lights outside the windows gleam while whipping up a storm of delicious goodies. In my household we have a tradition of throwing an annual “Christmas baking day” where myself and anywhere from 10+ of my friends gather to bake around 20-30 recipes given the year of delicious treats. We have some staples and try to incorporate new ones every year including some vegan, NF, and GF options. After the baking is complete, we prepare a plate of goodies for the library, post office, sheriffs office, SAR team, and fire department before dividing up the rest among ourselves. Believe me, there is always plenty to go around. It’s a great way to see people, laugh, and have fun. Unfortunately, due to COVID we haven’t been able to do the traditional holiday baking day in several years but my parents and I did a mini version on Christmas Eve where we made a few of our favorites to eat and give away to friends.

This year, we made Cinnamon star bread, strop waffles, peanut butter kiss cookies, ginger snaps, and peppermint oreo truffles. The pup helped with the cleanup.

If you’d like to try these recipes your self check out King Arthur Flour for the Cinnamon Star . You’ll need a waffle or krum kake iron for the stroopwaffles but just take one of the basic Dutch recipes like this one and then dip half the cookie in melted chocolate. For the peanut butter kiss cookies you can make them as cookies or in little mini muffin tins like we do. The ginger snaps are technically more like molasses cookies but they’re delicious. The peppermint Oreo truffles are delicious and super easy to make vegan and gluten free—just sub GF oreos and vegan cream cheese. Just combine one package of crushed Oreos (fine, use a blender or food processor) plus one package (8oz) cream cheese and 2tsp peppermint extract, mix well, form into balls and freeze for 15 min then cover with melted chocolate and top w sprinkles or crushed peppermint and cool bf enjoying!

Hope you like this short recipe roundup and try to make some of the goodies or comment down below what your favorite cookie is. Happy holidays!