Adventures In Freezer Christmas Cookie Baking

I’m honored (and a little nervous) to be guest posting here at Once a Month Mom, because anyone who knows me knows I’m not much of a cook (and if you don’t know me, you’re about to find out for yourself). But for many of us, that’s the beauty of baking in bulk: we don’t have to do it that often! The following is an overview of my big Christmas Cookie Baking Day. The cookies are all now safely stored in the freezer, leaving me free to give you all the play-by-play.

I had a ‘menu’ of six different Christmas cookies and planned to triple each recipe for a grand total of approximately 36 dozen cookies. In reality, it didn’t work out quite that way. You’ll see why.

Like a good OAMC cook, I had done my shopping the day before. My list included 22 cups of flour, 12 cups of sugar, 9 cups of brown sugar, 15 cups of butter, 10 eggs, 6 cups of powdered sugar, 3 cups of pecans, 3 cups of walnuts, and 4 cups of chocolate chips, among other things. Above is my kitchen counter top at 7 am on Baking Day.

I started with my son’s favorite Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies. He helped with the unwrapping (and occasional eating) of Hershey’s kisses. This recipe went very smoothly (because it’s so easy). I made six dozen, and when the last batch went into the oven, I started on Recipe #2: Gingerbread Men. This recipe makes 3 dozen, so I made three batches and left them in the fridge to chill while I made # 3: Sugar Cookies. They were soon stacked next to the gingerbread dough.

Then I decided to get a bit more daring with Cocoa Wedding Cake Cookies (I’ve always called them Snowball Cookies). Tripling this recipe proved too much for my little Cuisinart. My solution (after a very bad grinding sound persisted from the machine) was to mix only the butter and pecans in the Cuisinart, then transfer to a large mixing bowl, where I used a hand mixer.

These cookies were delicious! (Not that I sampled many.) I made 6 dozen, but took a ten minute break to take my kids over to my neighbor’s house to play and accidentally left the dog inside. I bet you can see where this is going…I came home to only 3 dozen Snowballs cooling on the counter. And the dog wasn’t even sick!

After the dog disaster, I started on the Cinnamon Pinwheels. This recipe was easier to follow than I’d anticipated (remember, I’m not very confident in the kitchen!). It’s basically sugar cookie dough layered with cinnamon-flavored dough, then rolled like you would cinnamon rolls, sliced, and baked. Tip: if your Cuisinart drops the ball like mine did, you can grind the Red Hot candies in a coffee grinder instead. It worked perfectly!

My last cookie of the day (started at 2 pm): Chocolate Chip Blondies. In hindsight, I wouldn’t have included a bar cookie recipe, or at very least, I would have tackled it earlier in the day. The batter was easy to make, but the bars (in three 9×12 pans) took a long time to bake and even longer to cool and cut. It was a bit more time intensive than I would have liked (although the result was certainly yummy).

At about 3 pm (with one hour left before retrieving my kids from the long-suffering neighbor), I pulled the gingerbread and sugar cookie dough back out of the fridge and started rolling each ball out one by one. If I had more counter space, I’d have rolled several out at once, but this is what my kitchen looked like at this point:

 

Next time, I’m cleaning as I go!

I was only midway through cutting out gingerbread men and sugar cookies at 4 pm, and finally finished baking them all at 6 pm. Nearly 12 hours of almost continuous baking! As each batch cooled, I zip-locked bagged them and put them in the freezer to await frosting, decorating, and gifting (that will be another day!).

How do you tackle your Christmas cookie baking? Do you spread it out throughout the season, or do as I did? If so, how did it go?

For you experts out there, any tips for me for next time?

About Amy

Amy Whitley is learning as she goes when it comes to the domestic arts. You can find her talking about things she does know a little about at her blog The Never-True Tales and her travel review site Pitstops for Kids.