Christmas cookies and peppermint bark

Rob and I have eaten more than enough cookies this past week, but since it's December and Christmas only comes once a year we're not going to feel guilty about it. In fact, we're going to keep eating cookies because right now there are about 50 more cut out cookies in our refrigerator.

Cookie week started out last Saturday at Rob's mom's house, where I experienced my first Smith women cookie baking weekend. Rob's grandma and grandpa, great aunt Sara, and aunt Maureen drove down from Michigan, and Rob's mom's home basically turned into a bakery with cookies taking up all available table space. I was introduced to many cookies that I had never made before, including one of my new favorites- Kiffels- squares of pastry dough folded into a log shape with a nut filling and sprinkled with sugar (the white cookies pictured below on the left).



Every year I say I want to make peppermint bark, because it looks so good in the stores but it's expensive considering it's just chocolate and peppermint candy. Well, my first attempt didn't go as planned, because when I went to break the sheet of chocolate into pieces the dark and white layers of chocolate completely separated from each other. Pretty disappointing after how long it takes to slowly melt the chocolates and then let each layer set. I think the problem was that I didn't let the dark chocolate layer sit out in room temperature long enough before I poured the white chocolate on top. It had been in the refrigerator so long hardening, that when I took it out it was pretty cold, which didn't allow it to melt enough to bind with the white chocolate. Anyway, of course the first thing I did was tell my mom about my problem, and she told me to melt the dark chocolate and drizzle it over the white peppermint pieces. That is what I ended up doing, and it turned out pretty good.




One thing we missed out on at cookie weekend were the cut out cookies, because they made these Sunday night after we had left. So I used my wonderful cinnamon red kitchen aid mixer to mix up enough dough to make at least 6 dozen cut outs. I made snowmen, stockings, candy canes, holly leaves, gingerbread men and stars. Thursday night after puppy class Rob and I decorated 4 of the 6 shapes. Don't get me wrong, I am so happy I have a husband that actually enjoys decorating cookies with me, but we definitely had different takes on the decorating. I wanted the cookies to be "pretty" and he wanted the cookies to be "fun with a lot of stuff on them." Rob knew as soon as I brought out my camera that these pictures were going on the blog, so here they are.

Rob's cookies


Mine




I keep telling Rob he has to bring a tray of these into work to share before we eat all of them ourselves. I hope they don't all disappear this weekend!