Christmas Creations

I've been working for awhile on Christmas presents. I prefer to hand make presents, whenever possible. It's usually not possible, because I wait until the last minute to start. This year, I didn't wait until the last minute. In fact, I'm almost done. So as not to ruin the surprise for anyone, in case some of the people on my Christmas list stumble upon this blog, I'm not going to post pictures yet. The spoiler alert is that I'm proud of some of my Christmas creations, and some other creations are causing me to brainstorm backup presents I can buy for people. Anywho, pictures will be up in a couple of weeks.


Also, I'm creating cookies right now. I want to get them made and packaged for people at school this week, because I'm still hoping for snow days. I used two recipes from one of my favorite blogs, How Sweet It Is. The Fat Fluffy Snickerdoodles are out of the oven and cooled, and they are everything they promised. (I heart a snickerdoodle, in general, but these are way above par.) Right now I'm about three-quarters of a my way through a batch of Hot Cocoa Cookies, and they smell awesome. I'm nervous about them still, mostly because I didn't have enough regular flour, so I made them with half self-rising flour. I convinced myself it wouldn't be a problem, but I have to wait for the marshmallows to cool before I can test my theory. 

Row upon row of snickerdoodles: a beautiful thing

Oh, hey there, hot messy blobs!

My cookies are much flatter and uglier than the ones on the blog. I'm going to blame it on the self-rising flour, and not my sub-par baking skills. But, I'm still going to give away the ones that are somewhat aesthetically pleasing, if only because it leaves more snickerdoodles for yours truly. Not really in line with the giving spirit of the season. I'll ponder my shortcomings while I eat snickerdoodles until I puke. 


P.S. Do yourself a favor and bookmark How Sweet It Is. Or add it to your blogroll, or RSS feed, or whatever it is the cool kids do to keep up with their favorite blogs. How Sweet It Is gets updated frequently, and has a good mix of sweet and savory recipes. And, Jessica, the blogger, is hilarious. She's the blogger I wish I could be.

Not an Apple Cup post

This weekend was the Apple Cup, the rivalry game between the University of Washington and Washington State University. Normally, I'm a WSU Cougars fan, because I grew up on the east side of the state, and I'm always a fan of the underdog. (The Cougs are perpetual underdogs.) This year, the Apple Cup was late in the season, the last game actually. The Huskies needed to win to get into a bowl game, and the Cougs would love a chance to ruin that for them. I didn't get into the rivalry this year, just because I would rather have a team from Washington go to a bowl game than some other team. (Spoiler Alert: The Huskies won by a touchdown in the last minute of the game.)


The other thing that may have softened my heart towards the Huskies is that my main squeeze's oldest niece is freshman at UW this year. She's also the reason for this post (which should have been one of the first posts, but I am a slacker). Her birthday was about two weeks after she moved up to school this year, and I know how much I loved to get care packages at school, so I made her Huskies cookies for her birthday.


I made my own cookie cutter (which is a whole other story). It was also my first trip into the land of royal icing. I made the first batch with a regular sugar cookie recipe, and I didn't like them. They were too thin and wafery. I like puffy cookies, so I remade them with a chocolate recipe dough. Much better tasting, but they didn't travel as well as I had hoped. 

Cut outs before they go into the oven.