Christmas Cookies

Baking is not my strong suit but when I get my Christmas shopping done early I get bored and decide to make Christmas cookies. It's easier to make my list of different types of cookies than it is to actually get in the kitchen and start baking.

I thought I'd make things easy on myself and make a "no bake" cookie. These are not as easy to make as you might think. I followed the recipe and brought my sugar, corn syrup and evaporated milk to a boil. You're supposed to let that boil for about 3 minutes. After a minute and a half the mixture started to bubble up and boil over so I frantically transferred it to another pan. Then I continued boiling. But the cookies were nothing but a gooey mess. This is the mixture after I scraped it all off the wax paper thinking I could salvage it. I began searching the internet on what I did wrong. I found out if you don't cook the stuff long enough it won't set up. If you cook it too long you could break a tooth. Not wanting to be outdone by a cookie I tried again.

Second batch was a success. This is a coconut pecan praline no bake cookie. I also made red velvet cookies, chocolate covered cherry cookies, cream cheese sugar cookies, pumpkin rolls, oatmeal raisin cookies and jam filled snowball cookies. My hands have been in dishwater so much the past two days cleaning up cookie mess I've even chipped my nails.