The cookies. OMG, the cookies.

[nwhiker]

Well, I had 14 teacher gifts to deal with this year. 14. I looked at purchasing, and we were into the $200s easily... I mean, even a small $15 Starbucks gift card, by 14... yeah. Anyhow. I could have cut two of the teachers, but it was still an expensive proposal.

Plus... I figure teachers get a whole butt load of little "things" that they don't need/want, so I like consumables: candy, or cookies, or jam (don't that a few times), or gift cards. One of the parents at the school gives plastic surgery gift certificates, but since I'm not a plastic surgeon....

Where was I? Oh yeah.

Cookies. For 14 plates.

I baked, literally, all day yesterday, except for the time I was giving a talk to AC's class (which went real well. It was loads of fun).

I made:
- shortbreads (I'll post the recipe some day. They're easy and really good.)
- Grammy's Chocolate Cookies. These are excellent. Honest comment: Martha Stewart? Her recipes really are, on average, very good. Chocolate, crisp, simple. Too sweet for my taste, but the kids, and the neighbour kids (I test-made them last weekend) loved them.
- Lemon Cookies OK. They start with a box mix and are ok. Not great. But ok.
- Strawberry-Rhubarb Bars only with Cranberry-Apricot Sauce instead of Strawberry-Rhubarb. I don't use the walnuts (peanut/nut free at school...), so add a wee bit more butter to the crust/topping. Real good. If anyone wants, I'll post the recipe for the Apricot-Cranberry Sauce: it does make the cookies nicely seasonal.
- Sugar Cookie Cutouts Blah. I very rarely (read: can't remember the last time I'd done it) use shortening rather than butter in cookies, but decided to here, since it's supposed to be better for cutout cookies. The recipe is... ok. The cookies blimped slightly, so the edges weren't crisp, and... I dunno. Blah. The orange flavour did some through nicely.
- Brown-Butter Oatlmeal Cookies with the no coconut option. Possibly my favourite cookie.

When they got home, the kids helped decorate.

I had our old dining room table in the middle of the room -the current dining room table is covered with stained glass projects-, and it was covered with a clean tablecloth and... cookies.



Here's dh's forced perspective on them:



Cookies on plates:



Each plate had about 2 dozen cookies on it... I think 26 to be precise.



And then we wrapped them all:



I made gift tags: I had a stamp that showed the sun/earth positions, with solstice and equinoxes and their dates. I stamped red cardstock, wrote "You are here" with an arrow pointing towards the winter solstice. Heh. Next year, btw, I'm going to recycle some of the holiday cards I get by cutting off the fronts and making gift tags. We'll see. I'll probably forget.

So there. Here is the whole Flickr set for the curious.

Today I have to make three stained glass snowflakes and a small mobile thing for the kids' "special friends". Then I get to work on the ones I want to make. And. And... And did I mention we're flying out on Monday morning? And that dh's aunt is coming to visit Saturday? Or that I haven't started my holiday shopping? Or that tomorrow morning is "Grandparent's Day" at school? (This should mean that parents don't have to go, but alas, we do, since it's the only time they do the end of year singing that they've all been working at).