Hanukkah

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Post Christmas Cookie Swap + Baking Giveaway

Hello my dear internet! I hope you had a lovely Christmas and/or start to Hanukkah and/or that you Made It Through. (I have been thinking about those of my friends who have lost spouses or parents this year, those who may be struggling with complicated family or health issues, and those who are still grieving many-years-ago losses, and how grief at the holidays feels particularly bleak and awful. I know you are making it through the best way you can and I hope there are brighter days ahead.)

Drastic tone switch.

I am just stuffed-enough full of holiday food that I think it’s the perfect timing for my much-delayed Cookie Swap post. I am able to admire and appreciate all the cookies, and bookmark all the posts and recipes, without feeling the need to IMMEDIATELY LEAP TO THE KITCHEN. Although I do still have a significant amount of butter leftover… Hmm….

Thank you to everyone who sent me scrumptious photos. Let me know if I have misattributed anything or linked to something incorrectly and I will fix it tout de suite.

Cookie Plates

For a variety of Reasons, I ended up making my cookie plates in the wee hours of the morning this past Monday. Carla and I delivered them later that afternoon. Five cookie varieties made it onto the plates:

Here is my assessment of the final products:

  • Chai Sugar Cookies with Eggnog Glaze: I have made these before and the cookies are wonderfully soft and pleasingly spiced. In years past, the eggnog glaze has been more like an eggnog clump, so I added more eggnog this year until it was truly glazy. But, in True Glaze Form, it then leaked off the cookies, so it’s not a cookie you can glaze at the last minute; you need ample time for the glaze to dry/harden. Delicious, though.
  • Chocolate Snickerdoodles: This is an old favorite, and Carla requests these often. I love them, too. But my husband thinks they are kind of a niche cookie. He took a big plate of assorted cookies to work and the chocolate snickerdoodles were the last cookies standing. I think they are chewy and delicious, with a wonderful mix of chocolate and that little bitter bite of cream of tartar that makes snickerdoodles so surprising and different.
  • Basque Cheesecake Bars: This was a new-to-me recipe, and the bars turned out to be delicious. You should know right away that I used gingersnaps as the base instead of graham crackers. (Actually, I didn’t have enough gingersnaps, so I added in a sleeve of graham crackers, too – about a 2-to-1 gingersnap-to-graham cracker ratio, which was delicious.) This recipe was simple but also a little scary to execute, because you have to let the cheesecake develop this richly caramelized top and it looks (and smells) burnt. The end product was so yummy. The recipe produced a staggering amount of cheesecake; we have so much left. (FYI, a cheesecake bar or two makes for a very festive breakfast.)
  • Cranberry Lemon Bars: This was a new-to-me recipe and I would like to try it again, but it wasn’t my favorite. I loved the twin bright flavors of lemon and cranberry, and I loved how easy it was to “make” the lemon “curd.” But the cookie layer seemed a little greasy to me and I felt like it was too tender and not cookie-y enough. These are also difficult to cut in a way that makes them look nice on a cookie plate. EDITED TO ADD: After a couple of days in the fridge, these are much better than I originally thought.
  • Mint Swirl Sugar Cookies: This was a new-to-me recipe and it worked, I think, but was also VERY LABOR INTENSIVE. Rolling all the little balls and shaping the cookies was very time consuming and I don’t know that they were pretty and swirly enough to make it worth the effort. Nice peppermint flavor, though. I didn’t have any red food coloring so I used green. I also found that the cookies as directed were much too large for my cookie plates, so I halved all the little balls. This means I have approximately ten thousand remaining cookie balls, un-swirled, that I will probably end up tossing.

Cookie Problems

The main issue I had this year (besides too much time making cookies that wouldn’t ever make it on the cookie plates) was that my cookies were all so flat. They tasted good, but I like a thick cookie. I did some googling and think that maybe my problem was overcreaming the butter and sugar. For some reason, I thought the more creaming the better… but apparently there’s a point at which you deplete the butter/sugar mixture of air and this can result in flat cookies.

But THEN Jen (HI JEN!), who bore the brunt of all my cookie woes via text, noted that she had also suffered from Flat Cookie Syndrome this year, and suggested it was an issue with the butter itself. Apparently butter manufacturers are increasing the ratio of water in their butter and that can result in flat cookies. Argh!

Cookie-Related Giveaway

Y’all, I took part in three major cookie operations this year. The first was at my house, with Carla, her friend, and my friend. The second was an impromptu get together at the neighbors’ house where a friend and I rolled, cut, and baked approximately nine billion sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies for eleven children to decorate. The third was my private middle-of-the-night cookie session during which I baked until the wee hours in blissful, uninterrupted silence while everyone was sleeping.

The first two cookie events were centered around cookie decorating, and required rolling pins. The rolling pin I used was a hand-me-down from my husband’s late grandmother, the kind with a big cylindrical barrel in the center and two handles on the sides. It’s fine, but pretty utilitarian. I don’t think I’ve ever considered that there might be rolling pin variations, or that a rolling pin could be aesthetically pleasing in addition to being a useful baking tool.

But then, my friend arrived at my house for the first cookie venture with an unexpected and delightful gift for me: a new rolling pin!

I had never once considered wanting a rolling pin, and I was nonetheless DELIGHTED by the rolling pin she brought me!!! It was so beautiful! And French. Oooh la la! So now I have MY OWN ROLLING PIN in addition to the inherited one!

This is all to say that I want to spread the rolling pin joy.

If you are interested in having your very own French rolling pin, tell me in the comments and I will randomly draw someone’s name at… some point. (Let’s be honest, I am not great at Making Firm Commitments these days, so it might be a while.) And then I will send the winner their very own French rolling pin!

You do not have to have participated in this cookie swap to participate. Nor do you have to like cookies or bake cookies. Rolling pins are good for many other baking projects besides cookies and I do not judge.

AT LONG LAST, THE COOKIE SWAP!!!!

It was so delightful to get photos of delicious-looking baked goods in my email! Here is everyone who participated (and if I didn’t include you, it is PURELY USER ERROR and has nothing to do with you or your cookies, so please resend and I will add to this post) and a couple who I forcibly included. Once again, if I have messed anything up, please do not hesitate to email me at lifeofadoctorswife (at) gmail and I will happily make any updates you desire.

  • Elisabeth at The Optimistic Musings of a Pessimist baked the following, and added some notes on her experience with each:
    • Peanut Brittle Bars. Relatively easy, so addictive!
    • Saltine Toffee – This was the one item my teenage daughter insisted I make this Christmas. You can make the recipe with or without the peanut butter! This year I made some with the peanut butter layer (my personal favourite) and added crushed Saltines on top to differentiate from the more traditional “Christmas Crack” that skips the peanut butter step.
    • Peanut Butter Balls. I never follow a recipe exactly – I just take tiny tastes along the way until it has the right texture. Mostly that’s because once I start eating the dough, I can’t stop. Instead of dunking them in chocolate, I flash freeze them for about half an hour and top with a little spoonful of melted chocolate. Much less work than dipping!
    • Brown Sugar Fudge. This is my 10-year-old’s favourite Christmas treat. It is SWEET, but very delicious and smooth, unlike some brown sugar fudge which tends to be grainy. This year, I spread the recipe into a 9×13 pan so it was relatively thin and cut the fudge into fun Christmas shapes before it had completely set. Any of the remaining scraps I rolled into little fudge balls since the fudge was still slightly warm and pliable.
    • Fall Chocolate Chip Spiced Cookie. These are the only actual “cookies” I have made this holiday season. I have frozen dough so I can pop a few in the oven on an as-needed basis. I think I’m going to be needing them a lot. Goodness, these are fast becoming my favourite cookies and it’s all thanks to you, Suzanne!
  • Ernie from No Small Feet produced Christmas Cookies and Rocky Road Fudge Bars.
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  • Gigi from Gigi Rambles whipped up some Peanut Butter Fudge, Almond Bark, Gingersnaps, Peanut Butter Cookies, and Chocolate Chip Cookies for her cookie plate.
  • Steph from All for the Love of You, her wife Beth, and their culinarily talented younger child North filled cookie plates with Buckeyes, Pizzelles, Pinwheels, and Gingerbread. (North also made almond butter chocolate chip cookies and an apple crumb cheesecake!)
  • Jen texted me photos of the beautiful sugar cookies she decorated with her kids.  

It was SO MUCH FUN to see what everyone made, and to have the extra little joy of thinking about my blog friends while I was baking. Thank you so much for “swapping” cookies with me! And don’t forget to enter the rolling pin giveaway if it suits your fancy.

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Day in the Life: Mid-December 2022

Cait mentioned that she would be interested in reading a Day in the Life post. I love to read those posts, when other bloggers post them! It is so fascinating to see what other people do with their time. My days never look like one another, which is… good. But a LOT of time is spent in front of my computer, so… that doesn’t necessarily make for interesting reading? 

I thought I would give it a shot anyway. Here’s a random day from this past week (mid-December 2022):

  • 6:45 – Alarm goes off. It was so windy last night that I kept waking up and I feel like I slept horribly. I hit the snooze button – unwise. 
  • 6:54 – I stagger out of bed. My feet are feeling much better during the day, but they are stiff and sore in the mornings. I go climb into bed with Carla and sing her the Good Morning song. She wants to sleep a little longer, so I set a timer for three minutes and do the Wordle, the free version of Spelling Bee, and the free mini crossword at NYT online. 
Disclosure: I tried to take pictures throughout the day as I was taking notes on what I did, but I forgot some. So this is a screen grab of today’s mini, rather than the one I did earlier in the week.
  • 7:00 – The timer goes off and I coax Carla into telling me what she wants for breakfast. (French toast sticks and strawberries.)
  • 7:05 – I put some French toast sticks in the microwave and then dash upstairs to the laundry folding center guest room where I grab a shirt (black) and fleece-lined leggings (black) and a pair of socks (also black) from the pile. I take them downstairs and throw them into the dryer to warm up so Carla can be roasty toasty when she gets dressed. 
  • 7:10 – Carla comes downstairs, opens the day’s advent calendar door, and I give her breakfast. She and I chat while she eats. Usually I take this time to make tea, but my husband is on call so he is still home and getting his coffee and lunch together so I stay out of his way. Carla and I give him kisses and hugs as he heads out the door.
  • 7:30 – I rinse Carla’s dishes for her (this is a treat; rinsing the dishes is her job) and put them in the dishwasher. I wipe down the counters. My phone chimes with a reminder that Carla needs to bring her instrument to school and she assures me that it’s all ready to go. While she’s upstairs, I tuck a couple of gifts I wrapped last night under the tree.
  • 7:40 – I brush my teeth and hair and wash my face, which is still itchy and inflamed. While I brush my teeth, I stretch my feet and calves. 
  • 7:45 – Carla and I put on shoes and coats and get into the car. 
  • 7:55 – I drop Carla off at school. I feel so lucky, daily, that we live so close to school. I remind her to look for her gym shoes in the lost and found (sigh).
  • 8:15 – I speed through Trader Joe’s grabbing frozen latkes for Hanukkah this weekend and some baby corn and English peas for Carla. Luckily, the store is nearly empty this early in the morning and I am in and out in five minutes flat.
  • 8:35 – Back home. I put the kettle on to boil. I start a load of towels in the wash and fold some laundry on the (clean) kitchen counter while I listen to an audiobook. 
  • 8:50 – I get dinner going in the crockpot. 
  • 9:00 – I drink tea and eat some breakfast while reading blog posts. 
  • 9:15 – Then I write a blog post of my own.
  • 9:45 – I have presents to wrap, which I don’t enjoy. But I do enjoy listening to my audiobook while I wrap them.
  • 10:00 – I shlep my laptop down to the basement and walk on the treadmill while I work on my current manuscript.
  • 11:30 – I am sweaty and at a good stopping point. Even though I walked for 90 minutes, it doesn’t feel like I did much – I have to keep the treadmill on a very low speed or I can’t type. I throw on my coat and go for a quick walk outside – it’s drizzling and cold and the damp air feels good on my hot face. I listen to my audiobook while I walk.
  • 12:00 – I take a shower. Ugh, I have to wash my hair today which means I have to dry it. I normally read an ebook while I dry my hair, but today I review some materials a client sent me in preparation for our meeting today. 
  • 12:45 – I throw a load of white laundry into the washing machine. Do I have time to eat lunch before my meeting? No, I do not. 
  • 1:00 – I jump on Zoom for a thirty-minute meeting with a client about a smallish project – a profile of a community philanthropist.
  • 1:30 – I do a quick draft of the profile while my thoughts are still fresh from our call. 
  • 2:00 – I remove the towels from the dryer and take them upstairs to the guest room, where I dump them on the bed. I grab another load of dirty clothes, take them downstairs, put the clean whites into the dryer and load the washer and run it. Back upstairs, I fold laundry and listen to my audiobook.
  • 2:30 – Still listening, I go make myself some tacos with leftover mahi-mahi. This is when I decide I know The Big Twist in the book I’m reading. It’s interesting– I think Jennifer Hillier is a brilliant writer – and I want to see how it all plays out. And to see, of course, if I’m right.
  • 2:50 – My mother-in-law calls and I chat with her for a few minutes. Then I do the lunch dishes.   
  • 3:00 – I have a few more holiday cards to address and stamp, so I take care of that and tape some boxes of holiday gifts closed so that I can mail them.
  • 3:15 – The laundry beeps so I carry up another load, do some more folding. There are a bunch of little odds and ends that have gathered in various rooms, so I move them to their homes (some of them live in the trash). Clean clothes in the dryer, the last load of the day in the washing machine.
  • 3:40 – Carla has an extra-curricular activity tonight, so I have a little extra time. I load her instrument into the car along with three boxes that I need to mail to my far-flung family.
  • 3:50 – I mail the boxes. Yikes. I totally understand why people prefer to have Amazon and Target etc. do their mailing for them; it is expensive! I determine to swallow my frustration about people sending me gifts to wrap instead of them wrapping and mailing things themselves. 
  • 4:15 – I go to the bank. Then I dash over to Starbucks to buy gift cards for Carla’s extracurricular instructors. I realize I forgot to bring Carla a snack so I grab her a bag of popcorn as well.
  • 4:30 – I wait in the car line to pick up Carla. It is one of my favorite parts of the day, seeing her little face break through the throng of kiddos milling about as they wait for their parents. 
  • 4:50 – I drop Carla off at her music lesson. Then I go to Kohl’s to wander around. I’m hunting for one last gift for my husband. I usually avoid Kohl’s – it is SO crowded and the line moves SO slowly – but tonight it is nearly empty. I find a pair of deeply-discounted pajama pants that I think he’ll love. There is no one in front of me at the register so I’m back in my car in no time.
  • 5:15 – I’m waiting for Carla to finish her lesson. While I wait, I have an idea for how to move my manuscript forward and I type notes to myself in an email.
  • 5:45 – Carla’s done with her music lesson. I drive her home.
  • 6:15 – I urge Carla to finish the mug she made for one of her extracurricular instructors. She is very weary of making mugs, but she volunteered to make this one, and tomorrow is the day we need to drop it off. While she works on it, I make her dinner (a hamburger patty with pickles, tomato, and cheddar cheese on the side, some rice, and some cut up kiwi). While the burger cooks, I sit at my computer and try to translate my earlier notes into coherent prose.
  • 7:00 – Oh my goodness, it’s already 7:00! I call Carla up to eat and cut up broccoli for my husband’s and my dinner. The lemon garlic chicken has been smelling SO intensely of garlic all day I wonder if I did something wrong. (Added too much garlic, I think, even though that sounds impossible.) 
  • 7:15 – After I cut the broccoli, I sit beside Carla at the counter and read her three chapters of the book we are reading. I really, vehemently dislike the book (there is too much fat-phobia and bathroom talk and also it is fully ridiculous.), but she thinks it’s funny.
  • 7:45 – Yikes. We got caught up in the book and it is now fifteen minutes past the time Carla is supposed to be in bed! I send Carla upstairs to shower and then dash into the basement to put a coat of ModPodge on the mug she just made.
  • 7:50 – My husband arrives home. He tells me about his day while I put some couscous on the stove.
  • 8:00 – I go up to kiss Carla goodnight, sure she will want her Daddy to read to her, but she asks me to read her another chapter in our book. I ask my husband to stir the couscous and take it off the heat once most of the water is gone. (Carla adds, very serious, “Whatever you do, Daddy, DON’T put couscous down the garbage disposal!”)  
  • 8:30 – I kiss Carla goodnight and go downstairs. My husband is in his office, taking a call from the hospital. I spend about twenty minutes on this blog post then run downstairs to put another coat of ModPodge on the mug.
  • 9:00 – My husband comes into the kitchen. I put some broccoli in the microwave to steam.
  • 9:10 – We sit down to eat and chat. The chicken is edible, but not good. I’m not sure what I did wrong this time – I’ve made it a million times before. Maybe it was just in the crockpot way too long.
  • 9:30 – We watch an episode of Station Eleven and then an episode of Abbott’s Elementary. My poor husband is asleep halfway through the latter. Once the show is over, I prepare his coffee for tomorrow and kiss him goodnight, leaving him to sleep on the couch. Poor guy. 
  • 11:00 – I apply a final layer of ModPodge to Carla’s mug. Then I wash my face and brush my teeth and do my feet/calf stretches. Then I change into pajamas and get into bed.
  • 11:15 – I stretch my feet with an old bathrobe belt (sounds weird, but it is very effective) and read a few pages of The Accomplice before I fell my eyelids getting heavy. Lights out, time to sleep.

Whew. This was an extremely busy day, but when I type it out, it looks so full of NOTHING. I would say that it is fairly representative of a typical day in my life, even though most days don’t involve so much laundry or so much gift wrapping/preparation/mailing. 

If my math is right, I spent between four and a half and five hours on writing projects (blog posts, novel, and freelance work) over the course of this day. Ideally, I would spend the entire seven-ish hours Carla is at school writing, but when you mix in things like grocery shopping, laundry, eating, and exercise, it almost never works out that way. Add in all the extra nonsense of Christmas preparations, and the time shrinks even more. Yes, I realize that some of this is lack of discipline: I could devote all the time Carla is at school to writing, and reserve the rest of the day for errands, exercise, etc. I am making choices about how I spend my time, and that’s something I am constantly examining and trying to revise. Still, four-to-five-ish hours is a good chunk and I’m grateful for it. 

Do you have any questions or post requests for me? If so, feel free to submit them here.