Eat Arkansas

The "beast" looks like a train engine to me but I'm not sure how that relates to Christmas cookies. Stars, trees, stockings, candy canes etc. would be the more normal cutouts. Making cutout sugar cookies and frosting them is very labor intensive, but definitely worth it. It's a great way to get the kids involved in the Christmas cooking.

I thought the same thing about the "beast" - looks like a train engine complete with cattle catcher. I'm thinking Polar Express here. . . Christmas tree surrounded by a lovely electric train . . .

Just supposing.

I got a gift last year of sugar cookie "dough" (dry goods) and a snowflake cookie cutter. It even came with silver sprinkles. Lovely idea, IMO.

I love making cookies of all kinds, but I rarely have time to make them until AFTER the holidays (between Christmas and New Years). One year, I determined to make a different cookie every weekend and Mr EY was generally pleased, but still asked "can we have chocolate chip cookies too?" So yes, we had them. Nothing better for keeping your co-workers happy than new cookies each week!

Definitely a choo-choo cookie on the plate.

We have a little HO scale train that runs underneath the tree. It only comes out at Christmas.

Homemade cookies make wonderful gifts, whichever end of that equation you find yourself on. It's not the holidays unless you burn yourself on the oven rack a time or two. Wine is always a good thing to have while baking.

Speaking of baking...I used the recent recipe for yeast rolls at Thanksgiving. They were almost heavenly, but not quite as light as I would have liked.

That's because I used slightly more flour than was called for. I doubled the recipe but after the dough was mixed up is seemed way too wet. I couldn't turn out a ball of dough, per se (which is how the recipe described what should be).

mzrz mann always says cooking is an art, but baking is a science and you shouldn't stray from the recipes when baking. She wasn't around to remind me.

The rolls have been requested for Christmas so I'll try again.

That be a razorback

Speaking of non-Christmasy Christmas cookies ... When my sister and I were little my aunt would always come over and the three of us plus mom would all make cookies. We had interesting cookie cutters, like sharks and dinosaurs. Some of our favorite cookies would be the ones where we would glue a little person behind the dinosaur's mouth with icing so it looked like the dino was eating the person, complete with red icing and all. Those were the days ....

I think the beast on the right is a composite of all the smushed-up f****d-up Razorback coaching interviews ...

Measure your ingredients by weight, not volume, Hugh. It's the most accurate way to do it.

You're all wrong. It's a skating reindeer. He's facing the rim of the plate with his hands behind him. I believe he is in the middle of some sort of leap. Of course, it could just be all the drugs.

Measure your ingredients by weight, not volume, Hugh. It's the most accurate way to do it.

Posted by: JG

Ah, yes. That's what Alton Brown says. I'll give that a try. Thanks.