Last Tuesday was DW's birthday. I took the day off and promised to take her to IKEA to shop for kitchen gadgets. (Ever been to an IKEA store? Ours is a 2-hour drive away, so we don't get there often.)
Unfortunately, the weather was lousy, with sleet and snow all day. We decided to hang out at home instead, and, as usual, we spent plenty of time together in the kitchen.
DW hasn't had much time for holiday baking because she's been helping her mother, who recently moved into an assisted living facility nearby. So we decided to make Christmas cookies.
We do most of our cooking from scratch, and we don't mind spending a lot of time on elaborate preparations. But on Tuesday we didn't feel like making a big mess and cleaning up afterward. So we "cheated" a little on the cookies.
We had a couple tubes of sugar cookie dough and a package of ready-to-bake chocolate chip cookies in the fridge. We cut the chocolate chip cookies into bite-sized chunks, sprinkled them with red and green sugar and popped them in the oven. While they baked, we rolled out the sugar cookie dough and started cutting with our favorite Christmas cookie cutters. We had fun trying to fit the shapes together like puzzle pieces to get as many cookies as possible.
While the sugar cookies cooled, we tinted some canned cream cheese frosting in red, green and gold.
How did the cookies come out? Well, the bite-sized chocolate chip cookies sparkle like little red and green jewels. And the frosted sugar cookies look a lot like the ones DW and I decorated when we were kids in our moms' kitchens.
What could be better for Christmas?