Baking for Good

One of the charities my company supports is St. Jude's Children's Hospital.  Tomorrow they are having a "holiday helper" event, which entails wrapping donated gifts to bring to the children who have to spend the holidays at the hospital and a bake sale to raise money.  So, of course I volunteered to bake cookies (I obviously made a double batch so I could keep a few dozen for my cookie gift boxes that will be going out next week - more to come on that!).

I received my new Gourmet Cookie Book in the mail on Tuesday, so I was pretty excited to try out a recipe.  I decided to bake Trios, because they seemed like a real crowd pleaser and are very festive looking.

Just a word of caution about these cookies - they are not hard, but they take a LONG time.  I'm talking 3 hours (and I didn't even finish them all - I have half the dough left in my refrigerator to finish tomorrow...although on that note, you can make this dough 2 days ahead of time.  So my suggestion would be to make the dough one night and make the cookies another!).

I tasted one that got a little burnt (CHEF'S TREAT!) and it was yummy!  What is your favorite bake sale treat?

New Inspiration

Yesterday I had a craving for a new cookbook.  I perused my favorite cookbook site, Jessica's Biscuit, in hopes of finding exactly what I was looking for.  I decided on The Essential New York Times Cookbook, after my highly successful pasta dish on Monday night.

The Essential New York Times Cookbook from Jessica's Biscuit

And The Gourmet Cookie Book:  The Single Best Recipe from Each Year, because how could I not!

The Gourmet Cookie Book from Jessica's Biscuit

 What cookbooks are on the top of your wish list?

cookies galore!

Every December my mom, my aunt and I spend a whole day baking cookies in preparation for the holidays.  The last two years our day was dedicated to biscotti, but this year we decided cookies was the way to go.

We started with sicilian wine cookies from Carole Walter's Great Cookies:

We then made Rosemary and Pine Nut Cookies (these cookies are seriously delicious, this amazing combination of savory and sweet!):

Then Hazelnut Shortbread Sticks from Bon Appetit's cook a day album:

And of course, classic sugar cookies (from a family recipe) decorated with festive red, green and white sprinkles:

And finally Chewy Ginger Spice Cookies, which are a holiday classic in my family:

These cookies will make a perfect little holiday treat for friends, family and colleagues!  I have plans for a couple other holiday cookies over the coming weeks...so keep posted!