Boo:
I don't prep , just do it !!!

Sorry !!! I prepped a little today. Took out the Pizzelle Baker.

I'll make them and Biscotti. Then some large fruit filled
Cookies and Lou's Sinbuns.
Of course I'll have a " Lou's Fluffy Cheesecake " in the freezer.

That's all. The rest of the goodies and Pastry's ,
I'll buy at the Bakery.
Happy Holiday's
LOU

Boo:

1. Nope, it's not even Halloween yet

2. Is Prozac considered "prep" for the holiday?

Annie

Booberry?????... Booberry!!!!!

How are you?

We're having a Christmas cookie swap at work and I'm making rugelach. Laura Brodie's (?) recipe on Epicurious is to die for!

LOL Annie!!!!!

No, not yet. I need to get through Halloween before I give it much thought. I am stll up to my armpits in costume construction.

Alexa

Nope, I'm don't prep for the holidays. I'm another just do it person. But customers at the cooking store that I work and give demos at are. We have had our Halloween cookie cutters, bowls, cupcake/candy papers out for a while. Those are doing well. We just started putting out Christmas items (sprinkles, cookie cutters, extra cookie sheets and baking pans, frosting kits, etc.) They are already buying items for the holidays. And in large quantities too! There is no recession here. I would say just from what I see going out the store, people are doing the holidays up this year. Much more home baking and cooking. Glad to see it. NancyLouise

I have decided not to make cookies this year to give away.
With hosting Thanksgiving for 20+, Christmas party first week in December and leaving for a week vacation the following week I'm taking a year off.
At least that's I keep telling myself. I might miss all my cookies!
And I am on a hunt for a great baked good for the people who would normally get the cookies.
I'd love to be part of a cookie swap- with great cooks but I don't know one in my area.

Annie, LOL! Maybe I am the only nutcase that starts this early.

Maybe more people are thinking "homemade" to try and save some money (LOL! I never find it to be cheaper.) I always go homemade to try and bring back some of the spirit of the holiday season. No, that spirit is not Prozac induced! Anyway, I'm glad to hear about more people having a homemade holiday rather than one sponsored by Walmart.

I've been thinking about it some. I went back to work this fall almost full-time and I've decided I'm not going to kill myself trying to do too much baking. I usually do more candy than cookies so I think I'm just going to ask my family what they really want and make those items. I'm also not gifting teachers with candy this year-big one is now in middle school and has a bunch of teachers. Little one has a teacher on a very strict diet. Still, I love the idea of making things I only make once a year like caramels, toffee, buckeyes, and Sharon's peppermint bark etc.....Here's the picture I post every year of some of my usual suspects.

I don't really do any prep. I usually just start making a list of the cookies I want to do... in the order I want to do them in. DS's favorite are the lebkuchen spritz and the spicy molasses cookies, so those are usually done first. I might make hamentaschen again this year, because I haven't made them for several years.

My method normally is to make all the dough in one evening, wrap them in saran and refrigerate. So easy with the KitchenAid. I just make one batch, clean the beater and bowl, and then make the next batch. The next evening I'll start baking.

No specific holiday cookie baking in this household. It must have been at least 30 years ago that our entire family simplified our Christmas celebrations. ThatÂs when I stopped the baking frenzy for the holidays.

We do have a nightly teatime, with a cup of tea and some cookies, nutbread, pie or tarts so I make cookies all year round. I often share them with friends and neighbors, who seem to appreciate them as much during the non-holiday time of the year as they do at Christmastime when cookies are all over the place.

One major shortcut I do is to triple the recipe for the dry ingredients, especially when lots of spices are involved. Then I divide them into thirds and pack up and label two zip lock bags of the dry ingredients and finish making the third. I also measure out stir-in ingredients like dried fruits or chopped nuts and put them in a smaller bag inside the one with the dry ingredients.

I always have about a dozen homemade cookie or quick bread mixes in the pantry that only need the wet ingredients added. I could whip up at batch of cookies to pack for the next dayÂs lunches in the evening without too much effort. When our kids were living at home, I also would have rolls of different varieties of from-scratch refrigerator cookie dough in the freezer, ready for slicing and baking.

When I get 50% off coupons for the craft shops, I buy parchment paper and cut it to exactly fit my cookie sheets and loaf pans. In our area, the uncut rolls are substantially less per sheet than the precut ones.

This week, I made two kinds from previously made mixes  molasses and cranberry-hazlenut-orange biscotti. Not as fancy as some holiday cookies but they sure tasted good in the middle of October.

Heavens NO!! I will start my holiday cookies the first part of Dec.....
Now that I'm working two days a week, (no brainer job)...
Will make a list and then make the dough one day and bake the next.

Linda

I don't do that many cookies. Several other family members make cookie trays and it would just be overkill.

But.........there are a couple of "must haves" that others don't make.

Molasses Cookies
Toffee Squares
And a couple of varieties of fudge/candy, unique ones.

I may be participating in a Holiday Bazaar (one day thing) at work this year and most of what I sell will be baked goods, homemade jams, etc. The bazaar is Nov. 13th, so I'm thinking about what might sell there.

So far:
Muffins (this is a work place, everybody wants something for breakfast!)
Cinnamon rolls
Brown and Serve rolls (to freeze for Thanksgiving)
Cookies (common stuff that everyone likes, i.e. Choc. Chip, Oatmeal, Peanut Butter)

Deanna

I finished making The Besotted Holiday Fruitcakes last nite. They will be happily basted with booze until Christmas.

Other than that, nada.

Boo - I've definitely got it on my mind! Last year I made & sold "treat boxes" to 16 people. Didn't make much money, because I didn't take the time to plan it out carefully. I've already had inquiries from 10 of those same people for this year - so I'm in the planning stages now. And some of those 10 people have told their friends too - so I may have MORE baking to do this year! I'm cleaning out the chest freezer this weekend in anticipation of getting started the first week of November.

Here were the choices from last year:

Breads:
Toffee-Banana Bread
Cranberry Orange Nut Bread
Lemon Poppy Seed Bread
Pumpkin Pecan Bread

Candies:
Buckeyes
Snickers Fudge
Oreo Truffles
Maple Cream Fudge (Ann T's recipe!)
White Chocolate dipped pretzels

Cookies:
Almond Brickle Sugar Cookies
Chocolate Covered Cherry Cookies
Eggnog Snickerdoodles
Pecan Tassies
RazzMaTazz Raspberry Bars (I used Roselin's Raspberry bars recipe)

The recipe I used for Cranberry/Orange bread was NOT what I wanted and I will not make it again. Also, one person has requested that I make Red Velvet cake balls for her box.

Good for you Gardengirl! I hadn't even thought of fruitcakes. Pat, it looks like you have your work cut out for you. Your selection of holiday treats sounds wonderful!

In the freezer already I have chocolate chip cookies, molasses cookies, and cinnamon biscotti. In the refrigerator I have the dough for black forest cookies.

How do the rest you do it? I'd never have enough time if I started in December.

Hey there Becky! Good to hear form you...not that I've been around much lately. Work has been more than crazy this year.

My group doesn't get into the baking mode until after TG. We have our favorites and have added many over the years thanks to this forum and various sources. We always have a major baking day/weekend to hang out with family and friends making some of our favorites and passing on traditions to the kids.

I love to bake and have a major sweet tooth so I always look forward to this time of year. Great memories and new ones in the making every year.

David

Usually I have 5 or 6 doughs in the freezer by this time of year-- nada done this year tho I do have 1/2 the Family Christmas gifts stashed away in the spare bedroom & the cuccidati filling mixed & "mellowing" in the back refrig.

Diane, I'd nearly forgotten about the cuccidati, I've got to make that again, it's way better than Fig Newtons!

Annie

I am thinking about it. :-) I'm thinking about marshmallow chocolate cups and/or peanut butter cups. I made marshmallows for the first time last night, and I think they would benefit from being surrounded by dark chocolate!. I am contemplating biscotti-- maybe cranberry chocolate chip? I like that combination for scones. And maybe these:
http://chocolateandzucchini.com/archives/2009/10/matcha_shortbread_cookies.php

What pray tell, is cuccidati?
I've always wanted to make a booze soaked fruit cake of some kind, but never was able to pull it off. Just one year I think I made some kind of bread that I soaked the raisins for a little while. That may have been some kind of tea bread. This year I will have booze soaked apricots left over from my liqueur making so I have to find a good use for them.

L, the cuccidati is like homemade fig newtons, it's delicious. Diane gave me the recipe a couple of years ago and it can be made with dried figs, so it's great for a Michigan girl who can't get fresh figs, LOL.

The recipe is at home, I'll try to remember to post it, but I'm going to the farm after work, I have fences to fix. Again.

Annie

Bump! Surely, more of you are thinking about holiday baking now. I'm hoping by the end of the coming weekend to have some packaged and ready to mail out. I still have some baking left to do though. The harder I work, the further behind I get. ~sigh~

I also wanted to experiment and make s'mores fudge and a cashew caramel concoction (that one I have a recipe for........somewhere!)

Boo I was just looking through my cookie recipes. This coming weekend is my weekend to bake cookies with my niece Sara.

It's the only holiday baking I do it makes for a nice girls weekend and she has goody boxes to give to teachers etc.

So far I've settled on Sherry's Santa Helpers, my Peppermint Bark and my SIL's Shortbread Meltaways made with Skor pieces....yum!

Need two more ideas so I'll be watching this thread.

OK, I'm kind of thinking about it, although I still have a piece of Thanksgiving's buckeye cake to get rid of.

I did buy 5 lbs of butter for $1.25 a pound yesterday, and 4 jars of marshmallow cream on sale. Since I've decided that I'm not putting up a tree this year and I'll put up just a few decorations, I might have more time to back.

However, I promised Amanda I'd take her Christmas Shopping and we have tickets to see "the Nutcrapper" (Bud's version of the title, LOL) and I need to do Christmas with my family AND with Elery's, AND I have Cooper to deal with, I don't know how much time I'm going to have...

I'll at least make shortbread and fudge and some cutout cookies with The Princess and Bruvver and find enough time to watch Rudolph and The Muppet Christmas Carol and the Jim Carrey version of The Grinch with the grandkids.

Annie

Nutcrapper....ROFL! The DH would love that title. My mother would cringe.

I have a good head start. I make cookies for lots of freinds & family. Made so far:

Almond & Chocolate Filled Butter Cookies
Cinnamon Biscotti
Chocolate Chip
Chocolate & Pistscio Pinwheels
Peanut Butter Cup Chunk
Peanut Butter Cup Tarts
Beth's Spicy Oatmeal Raisin
Soft Molasses
Black Forest
Chocolate Cocoa Crinkles
Sugar cookie cut outs (still need to be decorated)

I still have M&M cookies (DH's favorite), butterhorns, lemon white chocolate bars and spumoni cookies to go. Maybe a few others if I have time, energy, ingredients & space!