Every year in the lead-up to Christmas I get this idea to bake up a storm and give homemade baking as Christmas gifts but I’ve always been too busy, too tired, too something, to actually do it. I don’t know what makes this year different (busy – check, tired – check) but somehow I did it: I baked enough cookies last weekend to fill six tins as gifts for six people/families/couples. Six!  That is a lot of cookies.

I have wonderful memories of my mother’s Christmas baking sessions. She would bake for days, it seemed. I remember the planning, when she would discuss the list with us and ask if there was anything in particular that we wanted. There would always be Peanut Cookies (for Dad), always Chocolate Chip Cookies, usually Kornies (a soft biscuit with raisins and rolled in cornflakes), Christmas cakes, Yo-yo’s (like Melting Moments), and any number of other things. The shopping list was vast. The kitchen was overtaken with racks of cooling cookies. Divine smells drifted through the house. The end result was jars and tins of all manner of cookies and cakes, carefully stowed and tightly sealed, to see us through the weeks of holidaying, trips to the beach and unexpected visitors.

After last weekend I have a new appreciation for Mum’s baking marathons. I was in the kitchen for nearly eight hours on Saturday and another 2 hours on Sunday. I was exhausted! My back hurt, my feet hurt, I was all sugared-out from testing the goods; all I could do on Saturday night was drink a beer and fall into bed. I didn’t even vaguely approach Mum’s voluminous output: all I made was three recipes! Granted, they were all new recipes, which introduces a certain degree of stress, and I did double two of them. I also decided it was a good time to try my hand at piping decorations for the first time, and with a real piping bag too, not one of those squeezy pens (it’s just like me to over-complicate things, but luckily I resisted the temptation to blend my own mixed spice and simply bought a packet at the store). By the end I felt every inch the unfit, desk-bound, office worker.

Still, I was pleased with the results. The Snowballs were the stars, with meltingly tender shortbread encasing tangy dried cherries and dark chocolate, and they were fast and satisfying to make. The Chocolate & Ginger Cookies worked well too, although it was the tricky process of cutting cookies with rapidly warming dough (Brisbane was hot on Saturday), and re-rolling and re-chilling the seemingly endless scraps that was primarily responsible for my pain. I had trouble getting the thickness of the dough right, so the initial specimens were rather chunky (sorry to anyone who chipped a tooth), and the piping cramped my right hand until I figured out the right consistency of the icing.  I discovered that there is nothing like baking up a storm to make you not want to eat the results, and true to form, I don’t even want to smell those Chocolate & Ginger Cookies for at least a month. The third recipe needs a little work before it is bloggable, but it went in the tins anyway because there was no way I was going to make more freaking cookies just to fill the space.

It’s not all bah-humbug. The tins have been received with smiles and I got a nice little warm glow each time. That’s what Christmas is about, right? All the same, despite the warm fuzzies, I miiiiiight just go shopping next year. Merry Christmas all!