Christmas Cookies 2021

I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday! These are the cookies that we shared with our family and friends this Christmas season.

Many old favorites reappeared – I needed the comfort of the tried and true. 🙂 I will post the recipes for the new additions soon. I tried new Speculoos and spritz butter cookies. We loved both!

Best wishes for a Happy and Healthy 2022!

Cookies Clockwise from Top:

• Pecan Shortbread Cookies (4x recipe- 2 batches of 2x recipe)
• Haystacks (2x recipe)
• Lemon Butter Cookies (2x recipe)
• Chocolate-Espresso Snowcaps (2x recipe)
• Speculoos with Spiced Sugar Topping (1x recipe)
• Raspberry Meringue Kisses (2x recipe)
• Italian Butter (Spritz) Cookies (2x recipe)
• German Lebkuchen (2x recipe)

Cookies in Center:

• Hazelnut Linzer Cookies (2x recipe)

Thanksgiving Menu 2021

Happy belated Thanksgiving and Happy Holiday Season! 🙂 We were so happy to be able to celebrate with extended family this year!

I love to post my Thanksgiving Menu to help me plan in the future. Hopefully some of my menu choices are helpful to others too. I will link the new menu items to posts as soon as I am able.

Highlights of our celebration this year included my son’s Chamber Orchestra Thanksgiving concert and the beautiful place cards that my daughter made for our table. My kids also helped cook! My son made the mashed potatoes (his favorite) and gravy. My daughter made the vegetables and dip, photo above, to bring to a Friendsgiving celebration. My 19-month old niece brought her fabulous artwork to contribute to the decor, photo below. 🙂

Our meal included many old favorites. I revisited an apple-pear pie which was absolutely wonderful. I also tried new stuffing, Brussels sprouts, and pumpkin pie recipes. Lovely!

Thanksgiving Eve Eve:

• Speedy Baked Ziti
• Green Salad with Mustard Vinaigrette
• French Apple Cake with Vanilla Ice Cream

Thanksgiving Eve:

• Vanilla Pear Sour
• Flagship-Beecher’s handmade cheese with Raisin-Rosemary Crisps
• Shrimp in Yellow Curry
• French Apple Cake with Vanilla Ice Cream

Thanksgiving Day:

Breakfast:

• fresh mango, pineapple, & cantaloupe
• bagels with cream cheese, butter, and/or jam
• Crumb Cake
• Olive Oil Pumpkin Bread with Walnuts & Raisins (Bundt loaf)
• Banana Bread with Crunchy Sugar Topping (Pullman loaf)

Lunch:

• Classic Split Pea Soup
• Wild Rice & Mushroom Soup
• red grapes with sliced Honey Crisp apples and Bartlett pears
• sourdough bread and baguette slices with brie

Festive Cocktail: (served with our “Turkey Bread” appetizer)

• Apple Cider Margarita

Dinner:

• Herb-Roasted Turkey with Wild Mushroom Gravy (upside-down)
• Buttermilk Cornbread Dressing with Italian Sausage
• Cranberry Relish with Apple Cider
• Make-Ahead Mashed Potatoes
• Sweet Potato Spoon Bread
• Brussels & Broccoli Agrodolce with Cranberries & Chilies
• Roasted Cauliflower & Chickpeas with Mustard Vinaigrette
• Ruffled Pumpkin Milk Pie with optional whipped cream
• Vanilla Bean Apple-Pear Pie with Walnut Crust with optional whipped cream or vanilla ice cream

Leftover Dishes:

• Turkey Corn Chowder with Bacon
• Turkey Stock
• Sweet Potato Biscuits

Christmas Cookies 2020

Happy Holidays!

Although this holiday season has been very different, I was still happy to be able to share our Christmas cookies with family and friends. The assortment included our usual favorites, listed below. I added a Christmas version of our special linzer cookies, a vanilla bean version of my husband’s favorite- spritz cookies, and a new speculoos cookie.

Wishing you all a happy and healthy 2021!

Cookies Clockwise from Top:

• Chocolate-Espresso Snowcaps (2x recipe)
• German Lebkuchen (2x recipe)
• Lemon Butter Cookies (2x recipe)
• Haystacks (2x recipe)
• Belgian Spice Cookies (Speculoos) (2x recipe)
• Raspberry Meringue Kisses (2x recipe)
• Vanilla Bean Spritz Cookies (2x recipe)
• Hazelnut Linzer Cookies (2x recipe)
• Pecan Shortbread Cookies (4x recipe- 2 batches of 2x recipe)

Thanksgiving Menu 2020

Happy belated Thanksgiving and Happy Holiday Season to everyone! We definitely missed our extended family at Thanksgiving this year but our quiet feast was still lovely.

I love to post my Thanksgiving Menu to help me plan in the future. Hopefully some of my menu choices are helpful to others too. I will link the new menu items to posts as soon as I am able.

I decreased the proportions for our small scale feast but we still made quite a variety of dishes in order to accommodate everyone’s favorites. My kids actively participated in the cooking process throughout the day which was the absolute highlight for me. 🙂

We tried a new gravy this year- this change would have been met with great objection from our extended family. 😉 It incorporated roasted poblano chilies, a favorite flavor in our house. We also enjoyed a new festive cocktail which was so fabulous I plan to incorporate it into the menu next year.

Breakfast:

• Fresh honeydew, pineapple, grapes & cantaloupe
• Crumb Cake
• Olive Oil Pumpkin Bread with Walnuts & Raisins (Bundt loaf)

Lunch:

• Classic Split Pea Soup
• Wild Rice & Mushroom Soup
• Skillet Cornbread with salted butter

Festive Cocktail:

• Vanilla Pear Sour

Dinner:

• Herb-Roasted Turkey (upside-down)
• Buttermilk-Poblano Gravy
• Cornbread Dressing with Bacon & Sage
• Cranberry Relish with Apple Cider
• Herb-Scented Mashed Potatoes
• Sweet Potato Spoon Bread
• Slow-Roasted Carrots with Browned-Butter Vinaigrette
• Roasted Cauliflower & Chickpeas with Mustard Vinaigrette
• Pumpkin Pie Bars with optional whipped cream
• Brown-Butter & Vanilla Bean Apple Pie with optional whipped cream or vanilla ice cream

Leftover Dishes:

• Turkey Stock
• Sweet Potato Biscuits

Yes! My cat, Franklin “the Fluff,” has an Instagram page. ❤

Christmas Cookies 2019

Merry Christmas!

This year, I made an assortment of tried and true Christmas cookies to share with friends and neighbors, adding two new Scandinavian cookies that I felt compelled to try after watching an episode of Martha (Stewart) Bakes on PBS. 🙂

Wishing you all a happy and healthy 2020!

Cookies from Top:

• Raspberry Meringue Kisses (2x recipe)
• Chocolate-Espresso Snowcaps (2x recipe)
• Danish Butter Cookies (2x recipe)

Cookies Left to Right:

• Lemon Butter Cookies (2x recipe)
• Pecan Shortbread Cookies (4x recipe- 2 batches of 2x recipe)
• Haystacks (2x recipe)

Bottom:

• Swedish Spice Cookies (Muskotsnittar)
• German Lebkuchen (2x recipe)

Thanksgiving Menu 2019

Happy Holiday season to everyone! I love to post my Thanksgiving Menu to help me plan in the future. Hopefully some of my menu choices are helpful to others too. 🙂 I will link the new menu items to posts as soon as I am able.

I know that I am taking risks when trying new recipes for a crowd. This year I had a couple of misses…. The first was my Thanksgiving Eve cocktail, Tito’s Apple Cider Mule. It was okay- and we all drank it, of course!- but I had higher expectations as a Moscow Mule fan. I will have to work on creating an improved autumn version.

My daughter and I also made dinner rolls for our feast. After the dough was made, it could be frozen to rise and bake on Thanksgiving Day (a perfect make-ahead plan). They did not meet my expectations either which an unfortunate miss. I did enjoy the teamwork!

My son also contributed to our feast this year by making mashed potatoes. They were delicious. 🙂

The benefit of taking a risk by serving a new dish is finding a wonderful addition to the menu. The Cornbread Dressing with Bacon & Sage may be the best “stuffing” I have ever made. It will definitely be on my menu again next year! I also tried three new desserts and they were all delicious- especially the pear and almond tart.

Thanksgiving Eve Eve:

• Buckwheat Crêpes with Mix & Match Creamy Mushroom, Caramelized Sweet Onion, Sautéed Greens, & Citrus Shrimp Fillings
• Martha Stewart’s Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Thanksgiving Eve:

• Tito’s Apple Cider Mule
• Assorted cheeses with Sourdough Baguette, nuts, and red grapes
• Butternut Squash, Sage, & Ricotta Manicotti
• Whole Wheat Dinner Rolls
• Green Salad with Mustard Vinaigrette
• Pear and Almond Tart

Thanksgiving Day:

Breakfast:

• Fresh blueberries, raspberries, mango, pineapple, & cantaloupe
• Pecan Streusel Banana Bread (Pullman loaf)
• Crumb Cake
• Olive Oil Pumpkin Bread with Walnuts & Raisins (Bundt loaf)
• Bagels with scallion & whipped cream cheese

Lunch:

• Assorted Cheeses with Sourdough Baguette, and sliced apples & Bartlett pears
• Classic Split Pea Soup
• Ina Garten’s Wild Mushroom & Farro Soup
• Red Lentil Soup with Lemon

Dinner:

• Herb-Roasted Turkey with Wild Mushroom Gravy (upside-down!)
• Cornbread Dressing with Bacon & Sage
• Cranberry Relish with Apple Cider
• Make-Ahead Mashed Potatoes
• Cheesy Hasselback Potato Gratin
• Sweet Potato Spoon Bread
• Roasted Vegetables with Pomegranate Vinaigrette
• Maple Browned Butter Pumpkin Pie
• Apple-Brown Sugar Pie (with optional whipped cream or vanilla ice cream)

Leftover Dishes:

• Turkey Stock
• Sweet Potato Biscuits
• Turkey Corn Chowder with Bacon

Christmas Cookies 2017

Traditionally, I make one new holiday cookie to share with our neighbors and co-workers. This year, I made an assortment of old favorites. I just didn’t find a new cookie that caught my eye!

Of course, when it was “too late,” a friend gave us a gift of homemade butter brickle.  It was beyond fabulous! I would love to add it next year, or something like it, like an English Toffee recipe that I found from the New York Times. But that’s next year. 😉

Happy Holidays to you all! Enjoy your time with family and friends. ❤ Best wishes for a wonderful 2018!

Cookies from the Top:

• Spritz Butter Cookies (2x recipe)
• Raspberry Meringue Kisses (2x recipe)
• Lemon Butter Cookies (2x recipe)
• Chocolate-Espresso Snowcaps (2x recipe)

Cookies Left to Right:

• German Lebkuchen (2x recipe)
• Speculaas: Dutch Spice Cookies (2x recipe)
• Pecan Shortbread Cookies (4x recipe- two batches of 2x recipe)

Bottom Row:

• Haystacks (2x recipe)

One Year Ago: Christmas Cookies 2016

Two Years Ago: Christmas Cookies 2015

Three Years Ago: Christmas Cookies 2014

Four Years Ago: Christmas Cookies 2013

Five Years Ago: Christmas Cookies: 2012