Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Baking for Santa--and my family


The past few days I have been baking to get a jump on the holidays and I am having a bit of trouble keeping sneaky fingers out of the cookie jar. The goal is to cook early and freeze items to have in a couple of weeks.

I started with cookies and made some to eat and some to freeze. That went pretty well but I only was able to freeze about half of them. Then I moved on to cinnamon rolls. I baked some for the freezer and some for our new neighbors. It was a great thought, but the neighbors weren't at home and we wound up giving some to family members and then the rest of them are almost gone. Not a great start.

I know it CAN be done since my Mother did it every Christmas when we were growing up. At Christmas, an abundant supply of cookies, candies, and cakes did seem to magically appear. This was because Mother had been baking and stashing them away in the freezer and refrigerator while we were at school. We did bake a few things, but most things she prepared when we were unaware of her incredible baking that was going on while we were away. We didn't really get to sample items made for Christmas. I now think this was probably by design to make sure she didn't have to bake perpetually from Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve.

Starting tomorrow, I will just have to have to take a firm stand with the goodies I am preparing. Rather than sharing them, I will have to slap away the hands from the cooling rack where the cookies are waiting to be packaged and frozen. I will say in my best "food Nazi" tone-- "No cookies for you!" before I stash them away in plastic and store them in the freezer for the next week or two.

My family will be glad I did, especially with the gluten-free cookies I am baking. There are times I realize my Mother had some cunningly ingenious ideas.

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