Changed My Mind, Again. Had To Revisit A Recipe

    Last December I made gingerbread cookies.  When I made those cookies I did not enjoy the process of making them because I had to mix the dough by hand and it was difficult.  I also used a recipe that made a lot of cookies (Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond's recipe).  I swore I would never make gingerbread cookies again and I even went so far as to throw away my cookie cutter.  But I really enjoyed the taste of the cookies and after thinking about it, I knew I would be making more gingerbread cookies.

   So this year I made the decision to buy a stand mixer (it was on sale and I love it) to help with the mixing of the dough.  I did some research and found a smaller cookie recipe.  And I got a new gingerbread man cookie cutter.

    I found this recipe on youtube The Stay At Home Chef Gingerbread Cookie Recipe.  The description below the video has a link to the written recipe at their blog but the video is nice because she also gives baking tips.

    I made gingerbread cookies yesterday.  It was an easy recipe to make and the stand mixer worked great.  I was really happy with the cookie dough I made and it yielded 15 cookies.  I did not have any dough left over.  It was all used.  I made some men, some hearts, and two round cookies with leftover dough.  I can't wait to try them and let you know how tasty they are.  The unfrosted cookies are now in the freezer waiting for a special birthday in November.

   This recipe made just enough cookies for me, but it would be easy to double it.  The stand mixer made the process effortless.

   I didn't take any pictures of the cookies because they were so dull looking with no decorations on them.  Just brown cookies.  But I hope they will taste great.

Christmas Cookies and A Christmas Decoration Fail

    I made gingerbread men today.  I used the Ree Drummond (Pioneer Woman) recipe I found on line.

    This is the first time I have ever made gingerbread cookies and it will probably be the last.  It was tough mixing all that flour into the liquid mixture because I did it manually.  The recipe calls for a stand mixer, but I don't have a stand mixer and I didn't want to borrow my daughter's mixer just for these cookies, because I wanted them to be a surprise.

     These took a long time for me to make, between mixing the dough and letting it rest for two hours or more, then rolling it and cutting it out, I spent a good 3 hours hands on making these cookies and I didn't really enjoy it. 

      I didn't decorate my men.  I'm not supposed to eat a lot of sugar and these will be sweet enough without any extra icing or candies on them.

     In the future, I'll stick with sugar cookies or butter cookies put in a cookie press..

 

    I don't have a picture of my Christmas Tree decoration fail, but I will describe it for you.  I drew a Christmas tree shape and I cut out two pieces of fabric.  The idea being that I would sew the two pieces together and stuff them lightly with some polyfil, put a dowel stick in the bottom and put it in a small tin pail with some floral foam to keep it up right.  My pattern for my Christmas tree was not right and the finished tree looked awful.  I scrapped this project.  I'm looking for other Christmas decorations to sew.

    Here's a picture of some of my Christmas decorations.