Sunday, January 6, 2008

Yule Baking

I planned on posting this awhile ago, but completely forgot! But, at least now I know I won't be spoiling any surprises!

About a week before Christmas, mom and I baked several different cookies, and then put together some holiday gift bags for friends...made up of all the goodies we made...

We had a lot of cute cookie cutters, but not a very good collection of recipes to use them with, so we had to do quite a bit of research. We found several recipes for rolled cookies, and chose the ones we thought would be the most yummy. Then, we threw in my famous peppermint bark, I made up an impromtu bark to use up some chocolate, and we made a regular cookie that we couldn't resist...even though it couldn't be made with a cookie-cutter.

Here are the highlights:

Julbock-shaped Rolled Honey Carrot Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting and Walnuts:

Dala Horse-shaped Rolled Dutch Sugar Cookies with Vanilla Frosting and Chocolate Sprinkles:

White Chocolate Peppermint Bark:

White Chocolate Bark with Dark Chocolate Chips:

Snowflake-shaped Sugar Cookies, Dipped in White Chocolate with Almonds:

Leaf-shaped Peanut Butter Gingerbread Cookies:

Pineapple Cookies with Lemon Glaze and Walnuts: (My Favorite!)

Tree-shaped Traditional Shortbread:

And here are the cookie piles each person was given, ready to be packed up:


The results? Well, I have to admit...while the cookies were pretty good, they weren't as fantastic as I thought they would be. Maybe my expectations were too high! Ha! Even so, I'll be doing some more research for the next Yule bake-a-thon...so we can make some even more spectacular rolled cookies. Yummy!

P.S. I'm sure some people are wondering...what is a Julbock and what does it, and a Dala Horse, for that matter, have to do with Yule? Well, according to the Swedish tradition, a Julbock (or Yule Goat) brings the holiday gifts, and a Dala Horse has been used as a Christmas symbol since the time of the Vikings. Images of both are below...

3 comments:

malyvacsiga said...

Just pretty good?! If they were half as yummy as they were pretty, they must have been scrumptious!
I had to laugh about the SWEEDISH horse shaped DUTCH cookie. :-))))

My thing this year was truffels (just basic ones, but gooooooood!). The result: I fortunately still have a couple of pants that fit. :-/ :-D

Adrienne said...

I've never made truffels...hmmm...something to try!

malyvacsiga said...

And it's much easier to make than cookies, so good for the lazy-mother-of-four.... :)))))