Growing up, my mom didn’t bake cookies during the year, but come Christmas, she baked every cookie you could imagine. My mom’s cookies are good. Great. Nostalgically awesome and I love every single one of them.
Of course she ships cookies to me despite the fact that I bake some 1600 cookies every year myself. Even with all of the cookies in our house, we love receiving my mom’s box of cookies! She didn’t make as many varieties as she normally does each year but she managed to pull off quite a feat considering my sister has been in and out of the hospital three times in two weeks leading up to and through the holidays. (All is well with my sister, just in the post-honeymoon phase of the bone marrow transplant with some added heart issues to keep things crazy).
Here’s what my mom made this year:
Growing up, these Chocolate Peppermint Drops were my favorite. A chocolate walnut cookie with a light peppermint frosting.
Chocolate No-Bake Cookies. These are new to my mom’s repertoire, maybe within the last 10 years. My youngest LOVES these cookies.
Coconut Almond. These are the cookies I want to hate but love. They look so boring yet they are flavorful and damn delicious. Curse you coconut almond cookies!
French Cookies. This is the cookie that is the only duplicate in my mom’s and my cookie list. This year my recipe didn’t turn out half as good as her French Cookie. These are incredible. A lot of people asked if this is a Sable. No, it’s a French Cookie. More like a Specaloo spice cookie with walnuts.
Mincemeat. I hated these cookies growing up. Bleh. Now, I have yet to meet a cookie I don’t love, Mincemeat included. Do you know what mincemeat is? Martha Stewart provides not one but two recipes for Mincemeat in her Martha Stewart Cookbook. There is the meat version with ground beef chuck, apples, beef suet, raisins, currents, cherries, brandy molasses and every yummy cookie spice; there is a no-meat, but beef suet and walnut version with the same ingredients as above…and she provides a no-meat mincemeat made with green tomatoes. Mincemeat is wacky but this year it is my favorite cookie. My mom just buys the premade jar of mincemeat in the baking section of the grocery store.
Molasses Crinkles. This is my other favorite childhood Christmas cookie. Memories of yummy happiness.
Russian Teacakes. These little balls of butter, nuts and powdered sugar are fantastic.
Toffee Bars. This is the closest thing I ate to a chocolate chip cookie growing up. I told my kids this and they balked, “what? you didn’t have homemade chocolate chip cookies all the time like we do?” My kids are so spoiled.
Cookie plates. It’s what we do. Bake, wrap and deliver a plate of love.
Thanks Mom!
multi-hyphenated-me 