Cookie time

We had a cold couple of days Sunday and Monday. The weather station was sad yesterday morning. I’m not sure why LaCrosse felt the need to put an emoji on the display. It’s almost always sad because only rare combinations of temperature and humidity make it happy.

Sad, sad little weather station

It’s hard to get motivated to do my chicken chores on these cold days. I sometimes get my mittens wet when I change the water in the coop. On Sunday, my wet mitten froze to the metal feeder when I picked it up to fill it. Not a day to be putting your tongue on the flagpole. I thought that the chickens would hunker down in the coop during these cold days, but they spend some time outside. It was the first time we’d seen the sun in over a week, and it wasn’t windy. It seems they hate wind more than cold. Don’t like their feathers ruffled.

Sunday was cookie baking day. This is what happens when you stock up on supplies at Costco. I didn’t even know you could get powdered sugar in 7-pound bags!

Giant bags of cookie supplies from Costco

Jane and I always end up making too many cookies. Tough decisions have to be made. I could live without the sugar cookies. “But they’re so good!” Jane protests, so we make them. I like chocolate sugar cookies and caramel pecan bars. (I use a bison cutter for the chocolate cookies--it is structurally more sound than reindeer with their skinny legs and fragile antlers.) Terry’s faves are Mexican wedding cakes. Jane found two new recipes to try: orange cranberry shortbread and chocolate Mexican wedding cakes.

We agreed that we would skip piping frosting on the sugar cookies. We used sprinkles, jimmies, and colored sugar instead.

We started at 10:00 and ended at 3:00. It was a lot of cookies.

The orange cranberry shortbreads were delicious and Christmasy. That recipe is a keeper.

Orange cranberry shortbreads

We also decided to keep the recipe for the chocolate wedding cakes. Terry said, “I could eat the whole batch right now!” (I am not including a picture of the standard wedding cakes because they look the same.)

Chocolate Mexican wedding cakes

The pecan caramel bars are probably the least fussy recipe. Everything gets put in the pan and baked. Messy though, all that sugar and corn syrup.

Caramel pecan bars

We ended the day frosting sugar cookies. And frosting, and frosting, and frosting.

A table full of sugar cookies--Christmas bison, trees, holly leaves, bells, and stars.

Then we sat down with our feet up to wait for them to harden enough to pack them up. Jane took as many as she thought she could eat or give to her neighbors. I put most of the rest in the freezer. I intended to give some away at my Board meeting on Wednesday, but last month we decided to Zoom it because of all the diseases going around. Then I thought I could get rid of some at my book club on Thursday, but that plan is up in the air because of Winter Storm Elliot coming in that evening. In the end, we will probably have Christmas cookies in the freezer until Easter, as usual. Maybe half batches of sugar cookies next year.