Christmas Cookies

Living in Denver is not always conducive to baking - I discovered that the hard way when I first moved here after several dessert disasters. Though I may not attempt cakes as much as I used to, I still love to bake cookies. Cookies still seem to turn out right despite the altitude, and heck, they are just so convenient and fun to eat!

Holiday cookies are even more fun. They are especially nice to give as gifts, or just to have around for parties, for friends that drop by, or for your family houseguests for the holidays. Plus, I wanted to give my (relatively) new Kitchen Aid mixer a good workout.

This year, I finally invested in some commercial-quality baking sheets as well as several silicone baking mats. It made all the difference in the world, and I'd highly recommend it.

I made 4 different cookies this year (I picked out 8 recipes, bought all the ingredients for them, then ran out of steam halfway through):

Mexican Wedding Cakes - classic, always a crowd pleaser, and pretty on a plate.
Raspberry Lemon Thumbprints - for the fruity people. also very pretty.
Chai Spiced Almond Cookies - something a little different.
World Peace Cookies - for the chocoholics. see below.

Though all 4 batches turned out well, my runaway, hands-down favorite, are the World Peace Cookies. I am usually not a fan of chocolate chocolate chip cookies (I suppose I'm more of a traditionalist and prefer the plain chocolate chip ones), and I probably wouldn't have picked these up had I seen them on the cookie plate. But these have captured my heart. Aptly named, this is a chocolate chocolate-chip cookie that is made totally transcendent by the addition of some fleur de sel. If you make these, be sure to use excellent quality chocolate and fleur de sel - do NOT substitute regular table salt. Anyway, supposedly if everyone could eat one of these cookies every day, we would all be so happy that we would truly have World Peace. I, however, agree with smittenkitchen - if you were holding the last cookie of the batch, warm and soft from the oven, I'd most certainly resort to acts of violence in order to wrench it from your little fingers...