Cookie exchange

This weekend was pretty great; actually it was really great! Before I talk about the greatness of my weekend, I did want to recognise how thankful I am for my life and the people in it because recent events in the world have reminded me of this. Friday night I went to the ice hockey for the Vancouver Giants' annual teddy bear toss. We didn't have to wait too long before we were tossing our teddy bears onto the ice and to top it all off they won the game. Yesterday was spent tidying up the apartment in preparation for the arrival of some important guests this coming week. Last night was reserved for a lovely housemate dinner at Al Porto in Gastown before heading off to watch an amazing performance of the Nutcracker at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. I have never been to the ballet before and I was in awe of the performers and the beauty of it all.

As for today, I spent most of it baking cookies for our Christmas cookie exchange at work tomorrow. I was a little bit ambitious because I knew I had Kambie to help me, therefore I decided on three types of cookies. The first one I whipped up was a batch of peppermint white chocolate chip cookies. I found it easy enough to use the end of the rolling pin wrapped in wax paper to crush the candy cane.

For recipe number two, I choose to make a cookie, which was one of my favourites growing up in Australia and incorporates the deliciousness of the cherry ripe bar, that of choc cherry rounds.

The recipe is so old that I had to get my mum to scan a copy of it and email it to me, as I couldn't find it online anywhere. It is actually from a 1992 issue of the Australian Woman's Day magazine.

I had to improvise with the choc melts and copha, using milk chocolate chips and vegetable shortening instead. I also used all-purpose flour, which I believe is the equivalent of plain flour. As you can see from the photo below, I didn't have a fluted cookie cutter so had to settle for round cookies.

Last, but not least, were gingerbread cookies because you really can't have a Christmas cookie exchange without them. I was quite excited to make these little men, as I had never done so before. I trolled through many recipes before deciding on this recipe. I have to say I found it easier to roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface rather than using wax paper. If the dough got too soft then I just put it back in the refrigerator to harden up a bit. I used the Wilton royal icing recipe for decorating and went for simplicity in this area copying what I had seen a friend do previously.

I can't wait to see what everyone else baked tomorrow and hopefully they will love what I made. If my sampling is an indication then I think it will be a success. Such a fantastic weekend with so much awesomeness still to come!