My favorite, of course, is the molasses, I've been making those for at least 50 years, probably longer. They were a regular in Grandma's cookie jar.

I got a little carried away with the oatmeal, and added coconut and walnuts. The flavor was good, but they were crunchy and not chewy, baked about 2 minutes too long, at least in my opinion.

The chocolate chip always get eaten but in my eyes they are just too "ordinary" to get excited about. A couple of the kids want them, though, and so I make 'em.

The chocolate mint are new this year, and everyone enjoyed them, they taste kind of like the Girl Scout Thin Mint. I found some little chocolate mint baking "truffles" but I think the Andes chips would work just as well. I'm still trying to figure out how to "fancy them up". Dip them in dark chocolate? Or just the bottoms? Or maybe just half? Or a drizzle of mint icing, maybe pink? Or green? A drizzle of icing and a sprinkle of crushed candy cane?

I baked the sugar cookie cutouts, but the kids will be decorating them, that's tomorrow's job.

And the peanut butter. This one happens to have the addition of Reese's Pieces, mini M&Ms and chunks of Reese's peanut butter cups, gotta gild that lily, it's Christmas! Houzz has decided that's enough pictures for this post. What? It's not the time of year to ration sugar and butter, LOL.

And I just realized they are all round, I need to change up some of the shapes, I need some squares or diamonds or some kind of sculptural interest besides those cutouts. Maybe a bar cookie, although it's too late to make those Italian Rainbow cookies I like. Craftyrn's Cuccidati would make a good addition AND a good shape, or maybe biscotti.

What is everyone else baking?

Merry Christmas.

Annie

Annie, I'd like to ask a tangential question, please. I saw dried sour cherries on the grocery app, and overlooked the “sweetened”. Not sure why they're sweeten something that's supposed to be sour. Do you havee a sour cherry cookie recipe? I can figure out the adjustment for the sweetening, and the driedness if it's meant for fresh, but I want a worth it recipe rather than whatever I would throw together. Thanks!

I used to love making all the cookies. Your piles are making me nostalgic. I can just imagine your grandkids. telling their grandkids about your many snacks and fudges and cookies galore. ;)

Jamaican Rock Buns

Our number one non-cannabis cookie. We've now baked 36 dozen and given them away for Christmas.

A traditional Jamaican treat. The trick is to make them look like rocks.

Ingredients

• 4 cups all purpose flour, packed
• all of the zest and juice of a large navel orange
• 2 sticks unsalted butter diced as small as possible
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 cup toasted coconut flakes
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 4 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees
• In a medium bowl, whisk or sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, grated orange, and nutmeg
• Work in the butter just until the mixture is unevenly crumbly;
  it's OK for some larger chunks of butter to remain unincorporated.
• Stir in the raisins and coconut flakes
• Whisk together eggs and vanilla
• Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients and knead until all
  is moistened and holds together. Add the juice from the orange to
  moisten.
• Shape tablespoon size chunks of the dough into rocks and place on a parchment-covered baking sheet.
• Bake at 400 degrees for 12-15 minutes or until lightly browned
• Remove, let it cool and serve

plllog, you're talking to a Michigan girl, home to the annual Cherry Festival, LOL.

I do use dried cherries in cookies and I think unsweetened are better, they cut the "sweet" of the cookie. My favorite is to put them in chocolate biscotti but they are pretty good in shortbread too, with some chunks of good dark chocolate.

I've also been know to throw a handful into dark chocolate nut clusters. Pecans and sour cherries with dark chocolate make a kind of grown up Chunky bar!

Annie

Ricky, those look really good. How strong is the orange flavor with just that one orange in there? I know it's supposed to be subtle, but I still like to taste it. Let's see, drizzle that with some orange glaze, LOL, add some more sugar. (grin) OK, now I'm going to try to post the other two pictures and see how that goes. First the peanut butter cookies, with all the additions. Because that isn't quite enough sugar, between the cookies, the mini M&Ms, the Reese's Pieces and the Reese's peanut buttter cups, The Princess gave them a dusting of "snow" in the form of sugar. Yeah...

And the cut out sugar cookies, 5 dozen of them. One dozen for each of the grandkids to decorate and take home and the other dozen for my house. Everyone from the mail delivery person to the UPS driver gets offered a cookie. Outside, of course.

You know, I have a plastic tub full of cookie cutters, but the kids always want to make the same shapes every year. I can never convince them to add the camel because no one wants to frost anything brown, LOL. I even suggested chocolate, but no go. And I have one of those old copper Mirro cookie presses, Grandma used to make Spritz with colored sugar sprinkles every year, but no one likes those either. Pffft, they are NO fun.

Now The Princess is coming today to make more cookies, so we'll have Christmas Cookies, Round Two! Plus cinnamon rolls today for those nice neighbors.

Annie

Annie - there's a perfect mix of orange, nutmeg, and coconut. By putting the zest in with the butter and sugar when you cream it, you get an intense hit from the orange in every bite. We've made these with cannabutter and there's enough of the other flavors to completely hide the terpines.

Thanks, Annie! My father was from Michigan, but I think the only thing he really missed was the tart cherries. I figured you'd know what to do. The chocolate nut clusters made me think of that chocolate With stuff cookie I made up that was so good awhile back. It's not very sweet, so the sweet-tart cherries should be good! Thank-you!

What's wrong with pink camels? My mother didn't like them because they were too big and the heads broke off, but yellow and green striped camels are very festive!

Wow, you all are some fabulous cookie bakers!

I remember baking a lot of Christmas cookies with my mom when I was a kid. I baked more of the same cookies when my son was young but he wasn't much into helping so that kind of faded away over the years.

I did buy some new brown sugar and plan to make the milk chocolate/nut topped toffee bars tomorrow morning. The recipe is from my mom's old Betty Crocker cookbook.

I have another batch of Chex mix in the oven now. This batch is for me!! lol

If anyone wants cookie recipes there are 24 of them here.

I took a picture of a cookie plate

Starting at 11 o’clock and going clockwise, it’s chocolate crinkles, Christmas almond and fruit bread, vanilla strips, raspberry chews, speculaas, Vienna whirls, date nut torte peeking out from underneath the spritz which are on top, and completely hidden are the Swedish wedding cookies.

What a lovely plate of cookies - it's definitely cooky season 🙂

So far I've made butter spritz and gingerbread cookies - and eaten way too many of both. I haven't even frosted the gingerbread yet.

I had to eat the spritz because the first sheetful got too dark 😉

And hubby's decided to avoid sugar right now, so all the goodies in the house are mine😄

Made a pound cake tonight - more like a half pound cake, since it was half the recipe, which makes 2 cakes.

This is the first time in years now I haven't made chocolate crinkles. I like to call them chocolate snowballs.

Yum, colleen, those all look good to me, but I'd especially like the raspberry swirls and the spritz!

I just made a batch of your lemon butter, but I used limes instead, I had some I needed to use up. We use it as "cookie dip", so thanks again for that very simple and delicious recipe.

Annie

You're most welcome. We had some lemon butter in meringue nests with whipped cream and raspberries as part of our family Christmas dinner dessert last night (yes, I did the desserts. :-) And the ham, which was yummy- my butcher smokes his own hams and wins prizes for them Worth every penny.)

You might try making the butter with passionfruit pulp some time- that's good too :-)