Here's the start of my celebration earlier this evening: I baked up a few gingerbread cookies, and my mum helped decorate them. Seems like I've been baking almost every weekend or holiday. Go figure. At least it wasn't the 90 (or so) chocolate chocolate chip cookies I usually crank out.
There's also some eggnog to go around for tomorrow (with booze, how else?). Maybe I can hit the Ballmer Peak if I time it just right...
Anyway, the only rather annoying bit about this fiasco was the icing. I made royal icing (yes, with eggs), but elected to try a semi-cooked recipe even though the chances of getting sick from raw egg are fairly small (still gives me pause...). It turned out OK but definitely not as well as I might've liked (or as it would've turned out with raw egg whites), so next year is probably going to include a switch to meringue powder. So, cheers to you guys: If they wouldn't go off by the time they'd ship out, I'd send a few your way. raises glass
Oh, and in spite of all this rubbish I still suck at piping. And I'm not much of an artist. Combine the two, and you have the decorative disaster above.
But hey, you gotta start somewhere (even if it looks terrible).Also, the cookies were huge, and I can't get the smell of gingerbread out of my nose (how long does that last?). Oops.
(In case you're wondering about the army of styrofoam plates, I don't have a good explanation other than we needed to move the cookies shortly after this shot so they could dry without the cat getting curious and leaving cat-print-shaped-icing everywhere.)
