Coooooooookies!

So today the kid and I were making Christmas cookies after she got home from school, which inexplicably ends at 11:30AM for the final three days before the Christmas break.

I think between finals and the holiday frenzy that kids indulge in the teachers have had enough.

At any rate, while it snowed outside we swarmed into the kitchen and made two things:  my mom's recipe for Bourbon Balls and Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies.

The Bourbon Balls are made from Vanilla Wafers, pecans, corn syrup, cocoa powder, confectioner's sugar and awesome all ground up together and formed into balls.  Oh, and bourbon.  Bourbon Balls in the past have also become Rum Balls, Brandy Balls--whatever is handy, really.  They are simple, yet the sort of thing that people take a bite of and then stop--their eyes widen, they moan 'Oh, my GOD' around a mouthful of cookie and their eyes roll up in their head.  They're that good.

The Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies are Sugar Cookies, Take #2.  I foolishly tried to make my regular sugar cookie recipe the other day because I didn't have cream cheese on hand...and THAT recipe called for shortening only, haha.

This marked the last time I ever bake with shortening at this altitude ever again.  It was 2012's Thanksgiving pie crust fiasco all over again.  Into the trash it went...

The cream cheese version uses butter only, thank you, and will be the only way I make the damned things from now on.  While we were baking, I had the MP3 player blaring away while the house birds chirped along.  We're noisy bakers.  At one point I realized I was striding through the kitchen with a bottle of bourbon clutched in one hand and a gallon Ziploc bag of granulated suger in the other, singing along loudly with 'Time Warp'.

Good times.  I mostly refrained from doing the dance, though.  Couldn't risk spilling the bourbon.

The kid helped cut and decorate the cookies.

They are quite pretty...

But some artistic license crept in.  This glum little fellow, for example.

This little guy is happy though, despite being one of the 'burned' cookies my husband always requests.  He's weird that way.

Between these and the molasses cookies, chocolate covered peanut butter balls and raspberry meringues that are on for tomorrow, we'll end up with a good amount of holiday yummies to take to the school, local fire station, our dentist and other places.

And yes, we have a proper dentist, his office encourages the bringing-in of goodies, just like the places I used to work.  I knew I'd found the right dental professional when I saw the pile of flyers offering 15% off at the local gourmet chocolatier sitting on their front desk.

Raspberry Chicken Stew Cookies, Of Course!

So today was mostly devoted to running Chickam and cooking.

I decided to whip up a batch of raspberry meringues--deceptively simple, elegant little four ingredient tidbits that are super simple to make and crunch when you bite into them yet melt in your mouth.

Started with egg whites from the girls out back.

I was going to make half of the batch raspberry flavor and the other half coffee flavor, but got all involved and forgot to seperate out half of the finished meringue mixture.  So raspberry it is!

Toss together the egg whites, raspberry extract and cream of tartar.  Normally I make these with a teaspoonful of Chambord instead of extract, because, well, Chambord is awesome and luscious and made of angel whispers from God himself.  Next stick it in my trusty 900 year old KitchenAid mixture and beat the living Hell outta it 'until soft peaks form'.

Hmm, not there yet...

There ya go!

Now to add the sugar while the KitchenAid is whirring away and get it to 'stiff & glossy', which is what all little meringues aspire to be when they grow up.

Yeah, baby!

Onto my battle-scarred cookie sheets they are dolloped.  They don't spread but do puff up the tiniest bit when you bake them, so you can put them pretty close together.  Into a 300 degree oven for half an hour, after which you turn the oven off and forget about the things for anywhere from 2 hours to overnight.

Done!

They really do look disturbingly like styrofoam, and next time I make them I think I'll use an icing piping bag and try to make them look like packing peanuts.

Into the cookie jar they go!

At my house the cookie jar is a repurposed glass iced tea jar.

At the same time, I was making a chicken/vegetable stew for the animals.  I ladle the finished stew into muffin tins, freeze them and then I have little yummy chicken/veg disks to go on the dog's food or mix with rice for the chickens on cold days as a treat.  So the kitchen smelled of raspberry/chicken.

The kid ventured into the kitchen at one point, looking confused.  'What are you making...?'

No hesitation whats-so-freakin'-ever. I chirp out, 'Raspberry chicken stew cookies!'

She looks fascinated/disgusted for a moment, then disgust wins--but is quickly masked when I bend her a steely '...and you'd better like it!' gaze.  She wanders off in disappointment.

One of the true joys of parenting is messing with your kid every so often.