i think i'll wait another year

Because I sometimes do dumb things I decided to bake not one, not two, but three different types of christmas cookies tonight. What was I thinking? Actually, I've bounced back a little bit from where I was about half an hour ago, but I'm currently sitting in my furnace-like apartment contemplating that I haven't even finished the third batch yet. There are windows open. It's snowing outside. There would be more windows open if some of them weren't iced shut.

The first batch was a breeze. Orange Shortbread Cookies with Chocolate Chips? Count me in! A piece of, ahem, cake, except for creaming the butter and sugar together by hand. I wish I'd asked for a mixer for Christmas.

The second batch, Rose-Anne's Thumbprint Cookies, is actually still resting in my fridge. I started them before I realized the dough had to rest; when I came to that line in the recipe, I put my dough in a tupperware in the fridge and started on batch number three.

Which is Spice Cake with Prunes and Pecans (or walnuts if, like me, you forgot to buy pecans), from Moosewood. Prunes, you say? Yes, prune puree, to be precise. Kind of like gingerbread in the spicing, but without the molasses. Here's something about Moosewood that I sometimes forget: Sometimes there are significant differences between what i expect and what happens. I'll end up with an enormous amount of something (say, stuffing for squash), at least twice as much as I could ever possibly need for whatever purpose it's supposed to fulfill. Or the texture will be vastly different than I expect. Or, as with this recipe, it will take about twice as long to bake as the recipe indicates. I guess I'm at fifty minutes (the recipe says 30-45), and things are finally starting to firm up. It smells good, and if it tastes good when it finally finishes cooking I'll put the recipe in at the end of this post.

I'm looking forward to this being over. But the fun part is this: I'm planning on perhaps mailing most of this batch out to people in different cities. If I do that, and I want to give cookies to my friends here, I'll have to do this all over again in about a week. I think I'll spread it out more next time.