Baking Week

Every year for the last 18 years (minus the year I was enormously pregnant with Max), we have had a Christmas Cookie Open House.  The girls and I bake hundreds and hundreds of cookies the week of the party.

This week we have been very busy with chocolate.  I love the way Baker's chocolate has a colonial woman on every square of chocolate.



Colette busied herself with a double boiler.



There were nuts, of course.



We went through two or three dozen eggs.



This is the "menu" for this year's cookie party:

-gingerbread men-

-dark chocolate-dipped macaroons-

-peppermint sticks-

-raspberry pita-

-dark chocolate-dipped pecan shortbread cookies-

-chocolate peppermint crinkle cookies-

-chocolate-raspberry bars-

-chocolate-cranberry brownies-

For the chocolate-cranberry brownies, I simply use Martha Stewart's Chocolate Chocolate-Chip Brownie recipe (from her original Quick Cook cookbook) and replace the nuts with fresh cranberries.  The...ahem...massive amount of sugar in that recipe sweetens those cranberries up just perfectly!  But really, you could use any good brownie recipe, or even an excellent mix, like Ghiradelli, and just add fresh cranberries.  This year, the cranberries were exceptionally large, so I chopped them slightly.



Coffee, tea, and steaming hot wassail will complete the "menu".  Tomorrow night's the night!