I did my Christmas baking today. (I took a half day of vacation from work so I could do it all in one day.)  I did 6 things — 5 types of cookies and a spiced nuts recipe.  I wish I could share the recipes, but they are copyrighted, so I can’t.  I will share what I can.

Two types of cookies I’ve made before.  One is peanut blossoms.  It’s a basic peanut butter cookie, except you don’t do the criss-cross press down.  Instead, when they come out of the oven, you press an unwrapped chocolate kiss in the center.  The other "old" cookie is seven layer bars. It’s a very simple (but extremely rich) bar cookie.  You just add each of the seven ingredients (butter, graham cracker crumbs, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, coconut, chopped walnuts or pecans, and condensed milk) and then bake.

I had four new recipes.  Two are keepers and one was an outright disaster.  I’ll be making the spiced nuts again.  It’s just walnuts, pecans, and cashews roasted with a mix of sugar, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg.  I may be making them again before my Christmas party if I don’t stop eating them.  They are really addictive.  I also found a lovely recipe for Russian tea cakes.  Basically, they are butter and walnuts dusted with powdered sugar.  Very elegant and light (despite the scary calorie count). 

I did a batch of ginger snaps, but I’m not in love with this recipe.  I like a more pungent ginger snap.  These are good, but not great.  I will continue my search for the ideal ginger snap.

The last batch was raspberry pinwheels.  That recipe will go in the recycling bin.  I have the worst luck with any recipe that uses jam, but this one just does not meet my prettiness standards.  I may have a dozen that I can serve.  The rest taste fine, but look funny.  Perhaps I’ll find some volunteers who want to eat them.

It’s good to try new recipes, even if they don’t turn out successfully.  If you don’t let yourself fail, you’ll never learn new things.  Remember, on all those cooking shows you see on tv, they only show the batch that turns out!