Can you believe that Christmas is less than a week away? Yipes! Have you got all your shopping done?
Yesterday I had a minor freak out because I still hadn’t received one of the presents I ordered back in November. I was wondering why this gift hadn’t arrived (pardon my vagueness, the gift recipient might be reading!), since I had received all the other things from the same order. So, I went back and checked the Amazon order and discovered that I never had actually purchased the gift! It wasn’t on the order, and I hadn’t even flagged it as “Buy this later.” Blonde moment! I frantically searched for it online, only to discover that Amazon was all out, and if I ordered today, the gift wouldn’t arrive until after Christmas! How could I have been so absent minded? Thankfully, I was able to find it at a local store and have it in my hands before the end of the day. Bonus points for no shipping and no lines! Crisis averted!
Ms. Owl says, “How could you have been so foolish? We owls are too smart to make those silly mistakes.”
While on the topic of Christmas things, I spent some serious time in the kitchen this weekend baking up lots of Christmas cookies!
On Saturday, I baked my little heart out with some of my girlfriends. Christmas music on, the tree all lit up, and a little bubbly in our glasses made the perfect backdrop for our afternoon of baking cookies.
We took shifts in the kitchen so it didn’t overcrowd, and made sure to taste-test every kind of cookie that came out of the oven.
There were shortbread cookies with dried cherries,
Anna’s thumbprint cookies with almond buttercream icing,
Stacie’s sugar cookies made into fun, seasonal shapes,
Vanessa’s chocolate chip cookies,
Sarah’s family recipe for sugar cookies, all carefully decorated,
and my mom’s sugar and spice cookies.
Yes, that’s a lot of cookies. And that doesn’t count the dozen that I accidentally dropped onto the floor/inside the oven because I tried to take them out without opening the oven door completely.
Whoops. Sorry Anna. 
Thankfully, I had disregarded my mom’s note at the bottom of the recipe: “THIS MAKES A LOT OF COOKIES. SOMETIMES I HALF THIS RECIPE,” so we had plenty to spare. 
We each took a plate home with samples of all the cookies and I’m still trying to come down from my sugar high. I loved tasting all the different cookies, and knowing that each recipe was special to each of my friend’s holiday traditions.
If you’re interested in recipes, I’ll try and get some of the others, but for now, here’s my mom’s sugar and spice cookie recipe! Enjoy!
Sugar and Spice Cookies
Ingredients:
1 ½ cups shortening
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
½ cup molasses
4 cups flour
1 tablespoon+1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
½ teaspoon cloves
½ teaspoon ginger
How to:
Preheat oven to 375°F. Cream shortening and sugar in large mixing bowl. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Then add the molasses and mix well. Mix together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves and ginger and add to the creamed mixture. Roll into balls the size of quarters and then roll in sugar and place on slightly greased cookie sheet. Bake for 5 minutes. Let them sit on the cookie sheet for a minute or two then put them on a cooling rack.
Question of the day: What’s your favorite kind of Christmas cookie? Do you have any traditional family cookie recipes?
