Advent Preparation: Cookies

One of my great joys for Christmas and Advent has been the baking. When I was a girl we often sent Christmas goodies to friends and relatives and during my years in printing sales I would do the same for my clients.

This year I have been experimenting with some new recipes and have found several that I think will be part of the tradition from now on.

My mother-in-law gave us a professional grade Kitchenaid mixer that I love as I can dump everything into it and let it do the work while I do something else. Plus S has his Hobart and I can use that for really big batches or for Christmas Stollen.

The children have been enjoying it as well. I bought a package of brown paper bags and have been letting them decorate them with crayons and will then use them for cookies.

Here is one of my stand-by basic recipes from Joy of Cooking (the older version). I love this recipe as I can flavor it almost any way I like: lemon and poppy seed, peppermint, orange and so on.

Rich Roll Cookies (page 711 in Joy for the original, I modified it somewhat.)

Cream: 1 cup butter

2/3 cup of sugar

Beat in: 1 egg

1 tsp of vanilla (or whatever flavoring)

Combine and add: 2 1/2 cups flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp? lemon peel (or other flavoring or ground nuts such as pecans)

I then roll it into a log and roll the log in poppy seed, sprinkles, etc.

Place in the freezer for a 1/2 hour or so then slice and bake on greased sheets at 350 for about 12 minutes.

Altogether it takes me about 20 minutes of actual prep time to make these. There are usually about 3 dozen and they last about three days if I’m lucky!

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