Every year I draw up an ambitious list of cookies I plan to bake, and every year I begin to falter a few days before the holiday, having worn myself out in the process of producing so many goodies.

This year I have an ace up my sleeve: Neve.

She’s been a great help with prep work and with getting everything into and out of the oven and onto cooling racks.  She’s also made up several batches of Peanut Butter Blossoms on her own.

As always, we also made a large batch of Hamantaschen.

Once again I also attempted Springerle. In the past, these cookies have consistently defeated me. This year I tried a new recipe, using King Arthur Flour’s Speculaas dough. There was a lot of chilling, rolling, chilling, molding, chilling, chilling, and more chilling. The results? Not too terrible. Not perfect, though, and I had a hard time with them. Still, I consider it progress!

We have many, many more to go, but the doughs for our butter cookies and gingerbread cookies are already chilling and ready to be cut and baked.  I am going to try and get the Meringue cookies whipped up tonight to set in the oven overnight.

I also felt overly ambitious (or stressed?) and decided to make the gingerbread for our gingerbread houses this year. I used the recipe from the America’s Test kitchen cookbook and simply measured out shapes for the houses by hand. Neve wasn’t thrilled with how thick it was (and not perfectly straight-edged), but Oona was ecstatic that she had a house she could actually eat this year.

Emily and I have been stuffing ourselves with all the extra gumdrops. I am going to need a major sugar-detox after this Christmas!

Tomorrow I’ll work on getting the cookies ready for the kids to decorate, as well as trying some new recipes. That is, if I have the time. Paul is taking them out to see the new Star Wars movie so I can wrap gifts (and drink gluhwein, of course). For a few glorious hours I’ll have a Christmasy house all the myself (and the kitties).