Bake-a-thon!

Yesterday was Remembrance Day, and I had the day off.  When deciding what to do with my free day, I figured it should be something fun and frivolous.  So I decided to do some baking.  A few days ago Lowen bought me a Christmas Cookies magazine, and I picked my top 5 (hopefully soon-to-be) favorites to make.

#1 - Peppermint Sandwich Cremes

I was excited to make these because I love peppermint!  Both the cookie and the cream cheese filling had peppermint extract in them, and that combined with the crushed candy canes made these little sammies extra minty!  They were fairly easy to make, just time consuming and a bit labor intensive.  They will definitely go on my favorites list!

#2  Espresso Tarts

These ones were easy to make but very labor intensive.  First I had to make the dough and form it into little cups in mini muffin tins, then I had to make the filling on the stove and fill the cups.  After baking them, I made the ganache to top them off.  I haven't tried these ones yet, but they smell delightful!  Espresso, chocolate, and cinnamon!!

#3  Lavender - Vanilla Pillows

These were quick and easy!  The dough was a basic shortbread type dough with dried lavender added.  Once the dough was made, I smooshed little balls into the bottoms of mini muffin tins and baked them and then they were done!  Super simple!  The flavor is really subtle yet delightful!

#4 Linzer Pinwheels

These little monsters were a pain in the buttocks. First of all the dough was way to dry and crumby to roll out, so I added another egg which seemed to help.  Then I rolled out the dough and slathered the jam on it and started to roll, but the jam oozed out the edges, and the rolling action squeegeed most of the jam off the dough and I was left with a puddle of jam once everything else was in place.  The rolls of jam-y dough-y mess went into the freezer for a few hours until they were hard enough to cut.  Cutting them was another pain because the jam got everywhere and bits of dough kept breaking off.  But, after baking them I tried one, and it was soooo good.  Mind you I love raspberry, and you could probably slather raspberry jam on anything and I'd eat it.  Cleo even stole one of these cookies and dragged it onto the floor, and then Lowen stepped in it and got jam all over his sock.

#5  Easy White Citrus Fudge

I ran out of energy by the time I hit this one.  Maybe tomorrow?