baking-palooza 2012 - day 2

Day 2 Group Shot

"Baking-palooza 2012" continued today with day 2 of cookies. 

The Sugar Cookie and Chocolate Crinkle dough I prepped last night for overnight chillin' was joined on the agenda by Snickerdoodles.

Today's common theme: "Cookies that are messy to make." (Powdered sugar, cinnamon sugar and sprinkles... oh my :)

Read on for my cookie commentary and stay tuned for "Baking-palooza 2012 - Day 3" tomorrow... I'm getting a lesson in fancy cupcake decorating!

*Again, Please Note: Recipes linked to are not necessarily the friends & family recipes I used, but are close enough :)

Sugar Cookies

For something that seems oh-so-simple, these cookies are the biggest pain. Maybe that's because they involve a rolling pin. And artistic talent, which I don't have when cookie icing and decorating pens are involved. That said, I do think my snowmen cookies came out cute. The frosting pen and my star-shaped cookies did not like each other though. And by the time I got to the Christmas tree-shaped cookies, I was sick of the pen and just dyed the icing green and dumped sugar sprinkles on top.

Chocolate Crinkles

I make these from my Aunt Trudi's recipe every year. They are soft, chewy, chocolate, powdered-sugary-deliciousness. They are also chocolate, powdered-sugary-messiness to prepare. :) But having to scrape layers of chocolate and powdered sugar off my palms is worth it. 

This year, I actually read how many cookies the recipe is supposed to produce, and realized I've been making these too large for a long time. So for those of you who eat these each year, don't be shocked when you see what I shall lovingly refer to as 2012's Mini-Crinkles ;) 

Snickerdoodles

These are the cookies that gave me my upper body workout today, which consisted of quickly waving dish towels in front of the smoke detector near my kitchen (which legally has to be there next to the door to the master bedroom) in order to stop it from going off over and over and over again as the parchment paper these bake on got a little crispy around the edges.

Other than the noise, these are pretty simple to make. ;)  I usually double the recipe (I have a whole jar of cream of tartar taking up space on my spice shelf and these are all I use it on... I'd like to get rid of it before 2022 ;)