Finished the holiday baking today. I skipped out on the annual German Pretzels for the first time in four years; I was feeling too exhausted to go through the whole process, so I opted for more smaller recipes instead -- which, ironically, turned out to be pretty much the same amount of work.
I'd been feeling like trying some new recipes, and so I decided to have a look at a cookbook my mom gave me for Christmas last year (*cough*Martha Stewart*cough*). This year's roundup included:
- Peanut butter cookies with peanuts and chocolate chips
- Butter rum cookies
- Gingersnaps
- Dark chocolate-orange-espresso cookies (I think these were the best of the bunch, by far)
- Tart cherry liqueur truffles
I scored some cute little tins this year, and all I have left to do is pack them up and deliver them. Yay, baking.
Thanks for the reminder - per our way back discussion of pretzels - I did find recipes that use sodium carbonate instead of lye. I suspected I might as both are close in pH. It's not that I have any objection to lye, I just have an abundance of sodium carbonate thanks to dyeing.
I still have to do the final step of taste testing. Having teethed on Philadelphia pretzels, I have some strong ideas about how they should come out.
Awesome! Let me know how they turn out.