cookies! numbers eight and nine

It's 11:24 p.m. and the rest of the family is sleeping. I can hear hubby snoring over the baby monitor. Actually I can hear him snoring quite well even without the baby monitor. (He'll love me in the morning for this shout out.) I've gotten to the point that I pretty much dread bedtime. There's just not a lot of comfort and joy to be had in knowing that the moment my head hits the pillow, I turn on some sort of invisible switch that screams, "Wake up and scream, baby!" Instead, I give you cookies.

And our pretty Christmas tree.

Yesterday went by in a flash - we seem to have that moment every year where we make a sudden discovery : it's 10:30pm, tomorrow is the last day of work before hubby's Christmas vacation, and he has to take in cookie gifts for his co-workers. And I rush around the kitchen like a madwoman, finishing up the last of the cookies and packaging them for the next day. For some reason only the Christmas cookie gods must know, I always, always, always end up having to ice spritz cookies on this frantic last-evening-before-Christmas-vacation melee. I don't think I can recall a time where this hasn't been the case : even last year, post emergency c-section and with a week-old newborn clinging to my breast, I still had to ice spritz cookies. To be fair, hubby helped, but I think these cookies have it in for me. I always envision the kids handling this part of the cookie festivities, and fate always decides that this is going to be my special joy.

Next year I'm not making spritz cookies.

Okay, I take that back. I LOVE spritz cookies.

This is my scary old cookie gun, courtesy of 1962. We bought it off ebay several years ago, because the new plastic cookie guns are pathetic. Sorry Kitchen Aid lovers, but not everything gets better with time. The neat thing about this old cookie gun is it has a great old recipe for spritz cookies very unlike anything you see today. These cookies are really, really good baked up and then dipped in a bit of powdered sugar icing and a few sprinkles. They have a hint of lemon in them, and you won't be able to stop eating them!

Oh, and I also made those Soft Lemonade Cookies I mentioned yesterday. Those turned out surprisingly yummy, and oh so soft and moist. Very good sweet yet tart lemon flavor! I was even a complete goofball and I skimmed over the whole "divided" part with the lemonade concentrate, and wound up adding quite a bit more to the cookies than I was supposed to. They still turned out well! The only thing I found was the oven was a bit hot for my liking; I turned it down 25 degrees. Of course that may have had something to do with all the extra liquid in my dough, too. Oops!

Tomorrow I'm baking up adorable Spumoni cookies and some mini mint brownie cups. Stay tuned!

Oh, and I'm going Christmas shopping with my mom tomorrow, just us girls. Well, and the baby too. Wish me luck.