Virtual Cookie Exchange

 It's that time of year again. Welcome to the Virtual Cookie Exchange and blog hop hosted by Carol at Just Let Me Quilt. I am excited to share a favorite Christmas cookie recipe with you that I make each year as well as a family tradition and a quilt too.

I will start with the tradition. When I was first married, 35 years ago, I started collecting the Department 56 New England Christmas Village. For several years either my husband or my mother would buy me a new piece as a Christmas gift. Originally I would put the village under the tree each year. Since we have a real tree this was a tedious last minute chore as my village grew larger. Eventually, we purchased a television/sound system cabinet whose broad top was perfect for my village. We no longer have a TV in that cabinet, but it still serves as the display case for my village which is now one of the first decorations that I put up each December. 

I try to make the set-up just a bit different each year. It makes me smile just looking at the photos.

Here it is when it is lit up at night.

The quilt that I am sharing this year is my first, and so far only, attempt at redwork.

This usually hangs on the wall that you face as you enter the front door of my home just below the railing that surrounds the second floor landing. I made it several years ago and am quite pleased with how it turned out.

Finally, the cookies. Isn't that why you came to this exchange in the first place? Each and every year, we make decorated Christmas cookies as a family. I make the simple sugar cookie dough, chill it and then roll it out. We all participate in the decorating. This pic of my son and daughter decorating and using the cookie cutters is from a couple of years ago.

Some of the cookie cutters I inherited from my grandmother, some were my mother's, some are ones I have collected over the years. You can see them piled up near the flour jar. We usually have quite an assembly line going. Decorating requires brushing on beaten egg white and then sprinkling with colored sugars, nonpariels and perhaps some sugar trees or stars and the like before baking.

Here is one batch right before baking.

As you can see, we get creative.

Here is the recipe if you would like to try these yourself. They are delicious.

Christmas Butter Cookies

Ingredients:   1 Cup butter, softened (I use salted butter)

                    1 Cup sugar

                    3 eggs, separated, save the egg whites for later.

                    2 1/2 cups sifted flour    

                    1 tsp. vanilla

        1. Cream butter in a large bowl, gradually beat in sugar.

        2. Add egg yolks one at a time, beating after each addition.

        3. Slowly add sifted flour.

        4. Add vanilla.

        5. Divide dough into two rounds and wrap each in 

            waxed paper, chill at least 1 hour.

Decorating: 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 

2. Roll chilled dough to 1/8 inch thickness. Use your favorite cookie cutters and place on a Silpat lined baking sheet (or plain cookie sheet). 

3. Brush each cookie with egg whites that have been whisked. 

4. Decorate with colored sugars, nonpareils, or other small sugar decorations.

5. Bake for 8 - 10 minutes. Watch the cookies, thin ones can burn.

These cookies can also be cooked prior to decorating with icing if preferred. Just eliminate steps 3 and 4 of the decorating and make the cookies a little thicker. Decorate with icing once cookies have cooled. 

Be sure to visit all of the other blogs that are participating in this Cookie Exchange.

December 1

Creatin' in the Sticks

Doreen – Just Let Me Quilt Guest

Bumbleberry Stitches

Home Sewn By Us
Quilt Schmilt

Food for Thought

Life in the Scrapatch

Ms P Designs USA

Just Sew Quilter

Cathie's Craftworks

Cynthia's Creating Ark

 

December 2

MooseStashQuilting

Karen's Korner

Sew Many Yarns

Selina Quilts

Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life

Days Filled With Joy

Words & Stitches

Just Because Quilts

 

December 3

Quiltscapes

Websterquilt

DayBrook Designs

Karrin’s Crazy World

Samelia's Mum

Songbird Designs

For The Love Of Geese

Stitchin At Home

Dreamworthy Quilts

That Fabric Feeling

 

December 4

Just Let Me Quilt

Quilt Fabrication

Seams To Be Sew

Happy Cottage Quilter

Pumpkin Patch Patterns & Quilting

The Darling Dogwood

Kathleen McMusing

Scrapdash

DesertSky Quilting 

I hope you enjoyed your stroll through these wonderful blogs. I know I will be collecting some new and delicious recipes to make this year and in the future.

Thanks for stopping by!