Cookies, continued

These neighbors are having a bare-bones Christmas

Some sort of 36-hour bug delayed the continuation of the cookie project for a few more days, and even once recovered I still somehow lacked enthusiasm. But "Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without any cookies," as an early (as-yet undiscovered) draft of Little Women started so on Friday I gathered all the necessary goods and got to work mixing up dough. 

The means of production, day 1

I started with the kitchen sink cookies (note hammer in above photo) and methodically worked my way through, cursing the new jar of Field Day peanut butter (for the Mongol Hordes) that was remarkably difficult to stir though I guess the positive way to look at that is that the cutting board received an unplanned oiling in the process. There was, fortunately, a decent amount of still-green fronds on the fennel (for fennel cookies--recipe from The Front Yard Forager) while I had just barely enough molasses for the windowseat cookies. I wisely took a break for a bike ride (see first photo above) which probably saved my sanity, but I was definitely losing steam by the time I got to making dough for pillowcase cookies, and I didn't mind at all that I had to wait a bit for yet more butter to soften before I could finally mix up the aggression cookies.

My favorite element here is the kitchen sink cookie rolls wrapped in old tortilla chip bag packaging.

This year's innovation was to then put all the dough, in its various forms, into the refrigerator and move on to cocktails. The downside of this brilliant plan was, of course, that it all had to be dealt with today. But Scott kindly took part, cutting out the armies of darkness and light, unwrapping Hershey's kisses (some shrinkage there . . .), slicing up the rolls of kitchen sink cookie dough, pulling cookies off cookie sheets, reminding me to use potholders, finding some Christmas music playlists, and generally making it all much more pleasant and efficient. 

Final production round

 A mere three-ish hours after putting in the first cookie sheet, the final sheet came out and the paragon of Virgos washed up the remaining dishes and I swept the floor. We then wisely took to our bikes to ride to Paseo in Sodo for some less sugar-based nourishment. The plantains (tostones) were a little disappointing, but otherwise it was just what we needed. After getting home I eventually worked up the motivation to make some fresh icing and finish the work on the army of darkness (aka windowseat cookies aka molasses cookies). I'm quite pleased with the final results:

I call it the Year of the Dot

My one concern is that the aggression cookies are extra fragile this year and I just don't know why. I worry about whether they'll hold up to shipping.

Now to find more permanent homes for all of them!