Christmas Cookie Baking Fest

Every year, I bake a zillion Christmas cookies for the staff at the Chateau Marmont restaurant. I go there often for work and everyone from the waiters to the reservations manager has become like family to me. So, I bake, I package and I deliver little treats once a year to these fine people as a small token of my appreciation for all the hard work they do.

This year, I made Ina Garten's Jam Thumbprint cookies and her White Chocolate Chunk cookies (with a twist). I also made little mini pecan pies(she calls them Pecan Toffee Tassies) , from a Paula Deen recipe. For the jam thumbprints (above), I used a sour cherry jam instead of the raspberry that Ina uses in her recipe. I think the cherry adds a great contrast to the sweet coconut, and it just seems more holiday-ish. The cookies were easy to make, and came out really buttery and lovely.

For Paula's mini pecan pies, I substituted the almond brickle chips with Heath toffee chips. I don't really know what almond brickle chips are, and could not find them anywhere at the grocery store, so I went with the toffee chips. Another change: instead of rolling out the store-bought pie dough before cutting it with a cookie cutter, I cut the circles out first, then used my fingers to make each round a little bigger to fit inside my mini-muffin tin. I really hate rolling dough out, especially when I have a bazillion cookies to bake, so this was much easier.

I love how the "pies" came out - they are the perfect two-bite snack. I have a feeling that this will be everyone's favorite. I will definitely be making these again.

Last but not least are Ina's white chocolate chunk cookies. I also made a couple of small changes here. Instead of using 1.5 lbs of white chocolate chunks, I bought a 12-oz. bag of white chocolate chips, and added another 8 oz. of cocoa nibs. The white chocolate is very sweet, so the nibs give the cookies some flavor balance, and it adds a great nibby crunch to the cookie. These cookies are incredibly easy as well, and I will be making another batch for some friends this season.

So what does one do after baking 150 cookies? Gift herself with a tall, ice-cold beer! Actually I drank this beer because a) I really wanted a drink; b) I had a ton of liquor but no mixers or even one lemon or lime or any kind of fruit in my house; c) I had no wine in the house. I looked through my fridge and found one Amstel Light, and it was at least two years old. I hardly ever drink beer, and what beer I do have in the fridge is leftover from a dinner party where someone brought beer. Still, it hit the spot. I also found two Asahi's back there, so I'll save those for another desperate day.

I put 8 of each cookie in a cellophane bag, and tied it with red and green ribbons. They all went into a big basket, with a note on what each cookie was (you never know about nut allergies or the like, so you always want to write a good description if you are giving away any type of food).

A big thanks to my new KitchenAid mixer - without you, this would have been a major task (as it has been in the years past). I feel like a new me with you by my side - anything is possible!