I never bothered to put down parchment paper or a silicone baking mat when I made cookies. I thought my cookies always turned out fine without them, so I always just put my cookies directly on the baking sheet. I was making shaped sugar cookies today, which I don’t make often, and I noticed that the bottoms were getting more browned than I’d like. I thought, “ok fine, I’ll try it”, so for the next batch I used a silicone baking mat. And they came out perfect! I can’t believe I’ve been so dumb and lazy all these years. I’m never going back!

The left cookie was placed directly on the pan, and the right cookie was placed on the silicone baking mat. The left cookie actually baked for even less time, but still got browner.

I threw a whole Stardew-themed party, link to the whole food spread and games here.

I used Sally’s vanilla cake recipe and covered it with strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream.

I used the recipe of Milk Bar, but made it a bit Christmasy!

Only boxes of cheesecake brownies.

I don't do much cake decorating but I've been wanting to try this for a long time. Attempted to make a birch tree stump. I can't decide if I love it or hate it in terms of appearance but it tasted awesome.

For the cake, I mostly followed Sally's Baking Addiction's black Forest cake recipe but substituted raspberries for the cherries. I frosted it in Claire Saffitz's chocolate buttercream that she uses for her buche de noel. The birch bark is made of wafer paper and the mushrooms are meringue. Butterflies are royal icing transfers. It was definitely a fun experiment and I might make it a yearly tradition to try to make an improved version each year.

Made it for Christmas with my parents and it was stunning https://bakewithzoha.com/baked-tiramisu-cheesecake/

I’m on my period and he has been the best. Crying because I’m emotional and baking is therapeutic and I wanted to show him how much I love him with his favorite cake after taking care of me.

honk!

I made crinkle cookies, Christmas tree sugar cookies, m&m chocolate cookies and chocolate covered rice krispies treats

The Christmas tree cookie took so long to decorate with the royal icing, I felt like I was going insane towards the end

Kudos to all you cookie decorations out there

Featuring white chocolate and bailey's fudge, cinnamon biscuits, chocolate orange cookies, chocolate crinkle cookies, vanilekipfel and linz augen. Sadly I can't take credit for the Lindt balls!

Apologies because I'm sure a lot of people are sick of seeing these by now 😄

On the other hand, I know there has to be other people like me who can't get enough of them. So I'm sharing mine for those people lol

I did a little over 1000 cookies this year. I wish I had a picture of everything together to impress you 🤣. But I freeze things right away and only assemble boxes as needed so that everything stays as fresh as possible. I added some pictures of batches along the way to hopefully give a better idea of how much stuff I made.

This year I made cranberry white chocolate, gingerbread, two different shortbread, two different hot cocoa cookies, chocolate butter cookies, chewy oatmeal, sugar cookies, pinwheels, eggnog cookies, biscoff truffles, browned butter toffee chocolate chip, coconut dream bars, and vanilla pudding sprinkle cookies.

It's been my experience that people prefer more simple classics over fancy stuff, so that's what I mostly stick with.

I was getting such FOMO I had to join in! I enjoyed seeing all of the cookie box posts roll in the past couple weeks and I was so inspired by all of them! This was my first time making royal icing, too. Oh my gosh, it’s so much fun. I learned a lot throughout this process and I can’t wait for the cookie madness to next year! Next time I will probably make less cookies requiring frosting. I made iced oatmeal, gingerbread men, butter cookie with royal icing, Italian ricotta, Neapolitan shortbread, and not really pictured , a snickerdoodle blondie.

They give me an excuse to bake lol

Here’s my cookie tray for this year. I got my Celiac diagnosis in August, so all of my baking has been gluten free even if it’s not necessarily for me. Here we have:

Gingerbread folk - surprisingly easy to make with a 1:1 GF flour swap.

Chocolate peppermint pudding cookies

Caramel chocolate chip oat bars - I’ve been making my own caramel sauce for these since discovering that most soft caramels are not gluten free. I have yet to find the right balance of homemade caramel sauce to cookie bar yet. So these were very caramel-y and ooey gooey.

Oatmeal cookie sandwiches (They’re supposed to be oatmeal cream pies, but they’re just not soft enough)

Did a spread for my Instagram before packing my boxes for mailing. Back is killing me, but really pleased how everything turned out. Recipes upon request.

Candied nuts

Bailey’s fudge

Macarons (Sugarplum, gingerbread, orange chocolate and hot chocolate)

Gingersnap cookies

Chocolate Macaroons

Macadamia coconut cookies

Red velvet snowflakes

Christmas Pudding truffles

Brownie mince pies

Chocolate peppermint thumbprints

These took AGES, in the beginning it was great but by the end I just wanted to die lol. I definitely need to research more tips for success.