Christmas baking on a Sunday afternoon

It wouldn't be Christmas and the festive season for me without some obligatory, yet fun Christmas baking. Considering time is definitely not my friend right now with only 3 sleeps until I get on the plane Australia bound, I had no choice but to cram two cookie recipes into one Sunday afternoon. It was an enjoyable baking session, which left me with only a few of the usually battle scars, accustomed to a klutz such as myself, in the form of one burnt finger and a couple of cuts. Anyway the motivational ingredients behind my recipe choices took the form of three items, that of Reese's peanut butter cups minis, peppermint candy canes and white chocolate. There was supposed to be a cameo appearance by some festive coloured m&m's minis, but I decided against it during the course of the baking process. 

Before you ask, I did not combine the ingredients into one recipe, which is why I had to find two cookie recipes. After a bit of a search online, the first cookie choice found here incorporated the candy canes and the white chocolate. I followed the recipe step by step, except I did not use chocolate filled candy canes and I used white chocolate chips instead of squares. I probably could have done with some more white chocolate as I think my recipe turned out slightly dry as I literally spilt my bag in half and melted one half to mix into the recipe. Nonetheless, they were successfully received by the usual suspects.

When it came to cookie recipe no. 2, I had been fixated on the Reese's peanut butter cups minis for a little while, ever since I saw them in Dollarama. The plan was to combine them with a chocolate-based cookie and use the cups almost as a chocolate chip substitute. After much searching I re-thought the plan and settled on the recipe found here. Upon opening the packet of Reese's I discovered they were bigger than I expected and therefore could only expect 1-2 of them per cookie. After I got over the slight disappointment, I finished the cookie recipe and was very happy with the result. Even non-peanut butter lovers positively received the cookie. 

As you can see one of these cookies randomly came out in the shape of a love heart, which I thought was pretty adorable and a fitting way to remember my cookies by. It seemed only appropriate that I should then duck out to my local Starbucks to pick up one of my last festive drinks of the season, a white chocolate peppermint mocha. What happened next can only be described as a little piece of heaven, freshly baked cookies and freshly brewed coffee...it doesn't get any better on a Sunday afternoon!