the edible kind of art

Dooley has informed me that he plans to contact his union rep. He feels that all his hard work helping me bake over the past few days has been hugely unrewarded and he wants fair compensation for his cookie guarding skills. (Although he may look level with the cookies in the photo, I assure you he is no where near. He is stumpy, so he has to resort to whining and chirping at the cookies in the hope that they will spontaneously jump from their containers into his mouth. So far he has not perfected this method although he remains hopeful.)

I love to bake. I usually do a fair amount of it during the year and then a huge binge of the fancy variety at Christmas time (to eat and to give as gifts). I haven't had the chance to indulge that love for a few years but this year is different - I'm going forward full gusto.

I look at food as an art form as well, especially baking. Every time I see something in a magazine or a show, I have to give it a shot. I've got a few new recipes this year that are very labor intensive but I'm looking forward to giving them a go.

I'm doing springerle for the first time ever and I've fallen madly in love with the rolling pins and cookie stamps. I was gifted one of each from House on the Hill and I'm hoping I have good success with it. If I do, I plan to make the cookie stamps a standing birthday gift request so that I can build up a collection, those things are absolutely stunning. Add to that the fact that the stamps and springerle are rooted in deep tradition dating back hundreds of years and I'm totally smitten - I love everything antique with an interesting history behind it.

I've managed to knock off four cookies so far. The first being the potato chip cookies (I neglected to get a photo of those and they are in the freezer now so that will have to wait until they come back out to be devoured). Here are the others:

Peanut butter sandwich cookies with chocolate filling

Lemon dip cookies (these are mom's favorites)

Ginger molasses cookies

The ginger molasses ones are my favorite from that lot, I'm a sucker for a good ginger cookie.

And just to keep things interesting, the universe decided it would be great fun to murder the oven two days after I bought all the supplies for the baking extravaganza. You have to admire the tenacity of it all.

We decided to get a little countertop oven. The little sucker is working its heart out and baking the best cookies I have ever produced. It does slow things down a little bit but its worth it - every single thing is coming out perfect. The big oven will be fixed but the part won't be in until after Christmas and I doubted handing people a tin with a I.O.U. inside of it would be nearly as thrilling as actually getting cookies to eat.

So the blog will be consumed with baking photos for a little bit, hope you don't mind. I'm not sure what I'll make tomorrow (my back is a little crabby from this weather) but there are four more cookies I plan to make and then there is the cranberry bread. Oh my, the cranberry bread - that's my absolute favorite. Does it get any better??