My Weekend in Photos
What. a. weekend. I’m going to need a few days to recuperate, plus about 45 high octane workouts to burn off the 56 pounds of butter I inhaled as I baked. As I’ve already told y’all, my mother bakes about 35 different kinds of cookies a year. And I’m not just talking 35 batches of a dozen each. I’m talking 35 batches of at least 3 dozen each. This year, we made roughly 1200. As soon as I got off the train (15 hour ride, I’ll save that gem for another post), I was put to work in the kitchen. I barely made a dent in the production because my mom, her best friend Mama P and my cousin Liz dominated the baking! Since I’m still delirious from cookie dough consumption and am bleeding butter and sugar, I’ll let the photos tell the story.
It all started innocently enough with me snapping some photos of my mom’s ornaments.
There was also some lovely snowfall when I arrived. Sadly, it’s all gone and it’s like 60 degrees here today. I want some snow for xmas, darnit!
And then the mass pandemonium ensued. To begin with on Friday, the fridge decided it didn’t want to work anymore. Just, stopped working. So all the dough we made that was being cooled had to be baked, THAT NIGHT. A little bit of a bend in the road, don’t you say? Luckily, without my help since I had a mental breakdown due to negative hours of sleep, they were able to get them all baked!
Gold trimmed cranberry and white chocolate cookies
Cranberry orange bites
Key lime pie thumbprints
Chocolate ganache
and a little peanut bark, just to name a few.
Now, before we get on to more cookies, you must first see the “room of ingredients.” Since NO ONE believes me when I say we use about 500 pounds of butter, I’ll just let you see for yourselves. I’m fairly certain just looking at this room will give you Diabetes or cause you to gain an absurd amount of weight.
So, yeah, that’s real life. Just take that in for a moment. As scary as it is, each semisweet chocolate chip and each pound of butter found a lovely home in each one of these delicious cookies.
And no, we didn’t JUST eat cookies this weekend, although there was quite a bit of that to be had. Mama P, who is an AMAZING cook, whipped up a delicious shrimp soffrito, fried goat cheese salad and some homemade garlic bread. I can NOT WAIT until she shares the recipe with me because y’all are going to LOVE IT. It’s so good with just the right amount of Cuban spice. Oh and the goat cheese salad? I can’t talk about it. I just, can’t. It’s SO incredible.
We also dabbled in a little bit of cocktail tasting since my recipe creator position this month requires me to concoct 12 different drink recipes. I know, what a ROUGH life. [Can’t wait to share them with you!]
Yesterday as we were finishing up our last batches, we took inventory of the kitchen, which sort of looked like a tornado had ripped through it. But, that’s the life of a baker, especially a baker who makes 1,200 different kinds of cookies.
If you look close enough, you can see little ol’ me frosting some peppermint sandwich cookies!
The troops have left the battle station, cookies in tow, and all that’s left now are the remnants of flour on my clothes, the butter and sugar coated spatulas and a pretty exhausted family. But heck, that’s what the holidays are all about, right?
Does your family have any baking traditions? What are they?
Tags:baking, Christmas, Christmas cookie recipes, cookies, featured, holiday drink recipes, holiday week
Your mother sounds like a buttery force of nature!