Mid-Month Mysteries: Christmas Cookie Cozy Mysteries--and Recipes!

 

Christmas is the ultimate holiday for those who love being cozy. Warm drinks, lights, gatherings, and so much more...it's no wonder there are so many cozy mysteries set at Christmas. It actually made it hard to decide how to narrow the book selection down for this post. Then I thought of one of my personal holiday traditions--baking cookies to share with others.  Here are a few mysteries I found featuring Christmas cookies. (Please keep in mind I haven't had time to read them yet.)

Murder at the Christmas Cookie Bakeoff by Darci Hannah

Christmas Cookies Mysteries, an anthology

 Christmas Cookie Murder by Leslie Meier

 The Christmas Cookie Killer by Livia J. Washburn

 

And here's a list of some of the cookies I bake every year:

Lemon Slice Cookies

Peanut Blossoms

Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheel Cookies  (the base recipe also works well for sugar cookies; I make my own buttercream frosting for them)

What's your favorite type of Christmas cookie? Feel free to answer in the comments.

 

 

 

Baking Day

Since we were supposed to get 6-10 inches of snow today, I took the day off from work. I have a lot of vacation time this year, and my boss didn't mind. Although I haven't written much (Alex didn't nap for very long today), I did manage to bake a loaf of our regular sandwich bread (a variation of nine-grain honey bread, made in the bread machine), two loaves of potato bread, and a batch of lemon scones. The last two recipes were new to me. The potato bread wasn't too difficult, but I had more trouble with the scones. I had to cut the butter into the dry ingredients with a fork, and the scone pan we have increased the baking time (the recipe called for cutting the scones into wedges and baking them on a parchment-lined baking sheet, but I wanted to try the scone pan). They were still good. We had the potato bread with homemade lentil soup--a good dinner for a winter night.

Cookie Exchange

This year, Eugene and I added something different to our annual bakefest. We invited some of our friends to exchange cookies at our house. We started our baking last week, over Thanksgiving weekend. We asked the participants to send us their recipes ahead of time so we could print them out on cards. We then mounted those cards on colored backings and stamped them with a gingerbread cookie stamp. We prepared over 100 of these cards last night, along with doing laundry and cleaning. Actually, I did some of that earlier yesterday, since I was home with Alex. (He woke up with a fever, and he had vomited in the crib. I brought him to Urgent Care, and he had an ear infection. Surprise, surprise.) We were but late, but Alex woke up early today. Eugene got up with him. Although Alex is taking antibiotics, it's going to take a few doses before he gets better. In the meantime, he had a fussy day and didn't even want to nap. We did get him to nap briefly in the car, but every time we tried to move him into his crib, he woke up. We still had to finish cleaning, shop, decorate, and cook some hot food. Alex clung to Eugene more than he did to me, so we divided the tasks accordingly.

We had about twenty people over for the cookie exchange, since people brought their husbands and children. Another friend of ours also sent in some cookies. It took a while for the party to get started, and Alex was very cranky and kept crying/screaming. But I think people had a good time anyway. There were all types of cookies--shortbread, sugar cookies, buckeyes/snowdrops, and a decadent cookie topped with a Recees (sp?) Pieces. I was too busy to take pictures, sorry. We wound up with plenty of extra cookies left over. As for Alex, we finally got him to sleep early. I just hope he doesn't get up early too!

Quick Update

Despite the long weekend, I've been too busy doing things to blog. In brief, I celebrated Thanksgiving with my inlaws, took Alex to Chuck E. Cheese, Sam's Club, and the mall on Black Friday (though not all in the same trip), went to Christkindlmarkt, and attended a little girl's birthday party. Oh yes, and I baked three batches of cookies so far. I would have baked another recipe tonight, but Eugene needed to finish some cookies he started earlier. Here are a few pictures from the weekend:

My Blog Chain entry will have to wait until tomorrow; it's too late to work on it tonight.

Cookies, Don't Crumble!

Alex's birthday party is Sunday. We still don't know exactly how many people are coming, as not all of them RSVPed but may still show up. That makes planning difficult, but I'm assuming about 70-80 people will come. (I figure it's better to plan for more than for less.) Since many of them will be driving a good distance, I thought it would be nice to have a little favor for them in addition to all the food and cake we'll have available. I came up with making cookies to tie into the party's theme (which I'll keep under wraps for another couple of days.) But what I thought would be a quick project has been more time-comsuming than I thought it would be. Of course, I don't have much free time to begin with after working and taking care of Alex. But here's what the last few days have been like:

Sunday--After returning home from Kristi's shower, I started making a double batch of dough for sugar cookies. Then I realized I was out of an ingredient and had to go to the store. I mixed the dough and put it in the refrigerator to cool. The dough seemed a little dry, but I thought it would improve after cooling. Unfortunately, it was still too dry. I realized I hadn't put in enough butter but figured it was too late to add it. So I had to dump it and make another batch. By then it was too late to actually make the cookies, so I had to store the dough in the refrigerator for another night.

Monday--I started rolling out the dough--which worked much better this time--while Alex was still up. It was harder than I remembered to roll it out, and the first couple of cookies were a little too thin. It was my night to put him down for the night, so I had to take a break. By the time I returned to the kitchen, some of the dough had warmed up too much to roll out well. At least I managed to make about two dozen cookies and prep more dough for the next day.

Tuesday--Eugene offered to help me, and it was much easier with two of us. Eugene rolled out the dough (which was between two sheets of wax paper) while I held the paper down. We finished all of the baking that night.

Wednesday--Before Alex went to bed, I made homemade buttercream frosting. Afterwards, I split it in half and colored it blue and green. Eugene again offered to help me frost the cookies, which allowed us to go to bed at a reasonable hour.

Thursday--Almost done; I just had to bag the cookies and find someplace to put them.


So the cookies are finally done, but there's still a lot left to do. I just hope people enjoy them. We did lose a few cookies due to breakage, but they found good homes in our stomachs. If some of the cookies we hand out are broken, I hope people don't mind.

Reviewing

I've spent the last two days trying to review a single chapter on the Online Writing Workshop. (Names and titles withheld to protect the innocent or not-so-innocent, as the case may be.) I didn't get all my comments done in a single session, so I posted what I had as of yesterday afternoon, then worked on it again last night. Unfortunately, as I was finishing up, the OWW logged me out, and I lost all of my changes. That'll teach me not to write it up in Word first! It was frustrating having to review it twice, but at least I had a better idea of what to say the second time around. Still, I'd like to make more progress and clear more of the crits I owe before more new chapters get posted. There are days when it would be easier to push rocks uphill in Hades! (Just kidding, really.)

Needless to say, I haven't gotten far on my own work. After the log-out yesterday, I did manage to write over a hundred words in The Key to All Locked Doors, the latest installment in my Lennon's Line saga. One of these days, I hope to finish the chapter. Of course, I'm also revising the second chapter of Day of All Seasons before I post it to the workshop as well. And once I finish reading some of the recent Lennon biographies, I should start revising Lennon's Line. And people think I spend too much time at the computer as it is. Sigh.

Not much going on in real life at the moment. Eugene and I are starting to plan our annual holiday frenzy of baking and entertaining. With all of the people we plan to send cookies to this year, we'll be very busy! At least I have an excuse to try some new receipes. I'm slowly going through our wedding photos and picking out my favorites; I'm only a third of the way through. Two months isn't enough time to get the album figured out. Let's hope Eugene and I agree in our scary way on what we want to do with it.

Speaking of Eugene, I assume he might like it if I spend some time with him, so I'd better call it a night.