Cookies!

Our family doesn't really do a lot of fancy baking at Christmas. Every week throughout the year, my mother bakes her famous, highly addictive, my father eats six a day, 'telephone calls from coworkers asking why there aren't any cookies this week, did we do something wrong?' inducing, 'childhood friends we haven't seen in several years dropping by on a Thursday night because they were in the neighbourhood and remembered it was cookie night' causing, unwritten version of a secret family recipe, chocolate chip cookies (yes, these stories are true!), so she's usually quite content to buy all the fancy Christmas baking from the ladies at the local craft show.

Except for the sugar cookies. As long as I can remember, we have always baked and decorated sugar cookies at Christmas. (my brother has even been known to bake his own cookies, in his own flat... although that story isn't really fit for this mostly G-rated blog!...).

When we were kids, we'd just eat the cookies. For the last couple of years, I have usually used the cookies as Christmas tree ornaments. This year, I've decided to make both kinds -edible cookies in Newcastle, and ornament cookies in Ottawa. (Its the same recipe, the only difference is whether or not I put a hole in the cookies before I bake them).

This weekend, I made the eating ones:
I baked the cookies on Friday, and decorated them on Saturday. Claudia was over, and although she was determined only to keep me company and knit while I decorated, I managed to convince her to join in the fun...

Such skill with the mini tube of icing! (note the abandonded knitting pattern in the background!)Of course, after decorating 50+ Christmas cookies in only 6 different shapes, it gets a little dull decorating your 10th Santa... at that point, the true nature of the Cookies take over...

first the reindeer start to show their stripes...
then the trees swim away,
the snowmen become cars,

bells spontaneously combust,

and Santa becomes a woman!

Eventually, once-harmless cookie men turn into zombies**


and the teddy bears go robotic and start threatening the Sugar Plum Fairies:

At that point, all you can do is wrap them up and send them off to someone's house to be eaten!

**Does anyone know of some very basic program that will allow me to turn these (admittedly poor quality) videos from my digital camera on their side, so they're the right way up when I post them?