Life takes its twist and turns, its smiles and trials.

At the start of this post, I thought my only trial was loosing my cookie recipes.  I didn’t even burn myself in the baking process, that is a huge smile for me.  So, I was baking away, got some group pictures of the cookies and decided to take a little break before I took close ups of each cookie.  Break time being over, I set up a glass of milk, the cookies, and fun decorations.  My mind is saying “this is going to be so pretty”, then I can have some cookies and milk.

Well, Life had a different plan.

Archie Cat got scared by something, jumped onto the photo area, onto the cookies and milk, which made it all crash to the floor and shatter.  So, as the saying goes, “don’t cry over spilled milk” well, I didn’t cry, although I did curse at it.  Archie Cat is fine, everything is cleaned up.
I am sad I don’t have many pretty pictures to share, although glad I still have the cookies to share.
Life doesn’t always turn out like we hoped for, although, we need to take it as we have it and smile while we are in it.

As for my recipes, I am not really creative on my Christmas Cookies.  I always look at the pretty decorated sugar cookies, I gather the recipes and plan on making them.  Yet, when baking day arrives I just make these three.  This year, I have lost my recipe copies I have made notes on for the past several years.  Yes, I really should know better than to try to organize my recipes.  I keep them all in a cabinet, although this year when I dug out Thanksgiving recipes, I put the cookie recipes aside knowing I would need them soon.  They are currently in the top secret location I put them in, although, I don’t even know where that is.  So, I searched around the internet to find and replace my lost copies.  The ginger cookies are the only ones I can’t find the recipe I used.

Chocolate Chip – this was the easiest recipe to find again.  I use the Nestle Toll House Recipe, and add about 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper and replace 2 tablespoons butter with my fresh lard.  I also use about a 1/4 cup less sugar, and some more chocolate chips.

Ginger Cookies – I thought this recipe would be easier to find.  This was the recipe I had the most notes on, perfecting to my tastes over the years.  So with all of the variations out there I decided to go with Betty Crocker.  They turned out good, yet I added a little more ginger than I should have.  So warning all that get my cookie basket the ginger has a bit more of a ginger kick than you might expect.

Glazed Chai Shortbread – This was a surprising find, and through the years became a simple favorite with deep flavors and a sweet glaze.  It was a little bit of a chase to find this one, I thought it was a Food Network find, yet after much searching found it was from Land O’Lakes Butter.

Enjoy the fun of food.  Even if there are trials, there can be cookies.