The Fruits, or Cookies rather, of my Labor

Every year my mom and I make cookies. We take a day, set aside all else, and bake. Anyone who has attempted to keep up with us on Cookie Day knows the marathon of baking we do. It's not for the faint of heart.

This year my poor Momma had knee replacement surgery. Alas, she isn't really up for the Boston Marathon of baking. And so, I'm doing it by myself. I made as much dough as I could last week. Today I baked...and baked....and baked.

Here's what you can look forward to if you happen to be lucky enough to be somewhere I'm taking a cookie plate:

Chocolate Stars (before chocolate drizzle and crushed candy cane)

Holly Joys

AND Andes Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies, Coconut Chew Macadamia, Biscotti, Ginger Cookies, Gingerbread Butterscotch Drops, White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies, Lemon Thyme Shortbread, Thumbprint Cookies and my Grandma's special sugar cookies!

Ahhh, my Grandma. The best baker in the world. That woman can make a delicious baked good out of anything. The last few years I have been making the sugar cookies from the mix from Costco. Nobody really ever eats them anyway. They are just pretty on the plate. But this year since I was putting them all together myself I thought, yep, going to go for Grandma's secret recipe. And so as the kids worked on homework I painstakingly rolled, cut out and baked 175 miniature sugar cookies. Set to cool in preparation for the pretty decorations they would be adorned with tomorrow. Then we went to Target.

Upon our return I drug the couple of bags we had into the kitchen to find my sugar cookies, the sugar cookies I just poured two hours of work into, mysteriously GONE! Now I imagine normal people would stand puzzled, thinking what could've happened. The container is still on the counter, and I even put the lid on. But we live with indoor horses. Their names? Brutus and Diesel. Now my dear sweet Brutus is a crotchety old man and doesn't get up much AND he knows that I would KILL him if he ate off the counter. But Diesel, our foster Irish Wolfhound/Great Dane mix, is a different story. I have caught him sniffing around numerous times. I think he figures, "Hey, I'm tall enough that my chin clears the counter by 4 inches. If I can reach it, it's for me, right?" WRONG!

And so the only one who will have gotten to enjoy Grandma's Special Sugar Cookies this year also enjoys feasting on kitty-roca. What a waste. As he stands at our backdoor, peering in because he is THAT tall, begging to come in, I shake the two cookies left in the bottom of the huge container at him and he finds something else to do for a while. Who says dogs don't have memories?

No worries about the rest of the bunch though. They are securely fastened and successfully hoisted above 6 feet. Tomorrow is candy day. Hopefully it will end better than today!

Nik