Christmas Cookies

I'm all about keeping Christmas as stress-free as possible - I've made these Christmas cookies the last couple of years now - I love them as it's one recipe, you can split it up once you've made the batch and add various things to add variety. On top of that, I really like that I can make the mix and pop it in rolls in the freezer and slice into (uniform...I like that too - sad I know) round wee bikkies when you feel like actually baking them - so easy

The recipe is one from my mum's collection - it's fabulous!

BULK REFRIGERATOR BISCUITS - Makes 100



250g butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspn vanilla
2 eggs
4 cups flour
¼ cup cornflour
1 tblspn baking powder
½ teaspn salt

Cream together butter, sugar and vanilla, until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time. Mix dry ingredients together and work into the creamed mixture.

Divide dough in ¼ s and add any of the following:


 ½ cup coconut


 1 tblspn cocoa


 ½ cup cornflakes


 ½ cup currants or sultanas


 almond essence and top each biscuit with an almond.


Form into 4 rolls, wrap in foil and freeze. (I use gladwrap)Chill first if too soft to handle. Thaw until soft enough to slice. Cut into 1 cm slices. Place on greased baking tray. 180 degrees c about 15 mins.

Last year I did them all choc drops and dried apricots coarsely chopped. This year I split it into 4 and did
* choc drops & dried apricots
* dried apricots, white choc and coconut
* afghan style - cornflakes and cocoa (I iced them with choc icing and added a wee slice of almond on top)
* 'santa's buttons' - pushed an indent in the centre of each one and filled with jam before baking
 
Yum! Penny selected some tonight for Santa - they're sitting on a wee table in the lounge with a glass of milk, the fireplace door is also open so Santa can come down the chimney and there is water and reindeer food outside.

Just A Little Christmas Baking

Penny and I have been doing some baking in the last couple of days - gingerbread cookies in a variety of Christmassy shapes. After hauling out all my Christmas cookie cutters I realised just what a range I have.

It started with some happy little gingerbread men on Friday.
Notice the little P for Penny on the cooling rack, it's what my mum used to do with leftovers :)

Then Saturday - it was time to do some decorating! Penny was given some icing of different colours to do some ginerbread painting with.

And voila! In the next pic, her masterpieces are in the lower left hand corner. The cooling racks are covered with my efforts while she iced.

Lots of these bikkies went on to go into some wee packages for some rellies today. Penny had made some Christmas cards and drawings last week, and so we packaged up some bikkies and sent them off with Shane today to take back to family in Wanganui.

And it's fair to say we consumed a fair few too...the tin is looking pretty bare again now. But we can blame Shane for eating lots too while he was here for the weekend