Wordless Wednesday: Of Mice and Men...

*Nearly wordless... I tinted the dough for the mice to be light brown this year, tinted the crowns gold and rolled yellow colored-sugar into them before cutting out. We did white cotton-candy (strawberry flavored) or white & pink non-pareils for the Santa beards since Joy is allergic to coconut, and most of the kids don't like it anyway.

Santa in Ski Goggles & Nutcracker Mice

Baked all weekend, and am just ready for some R&R now. Will post recipes (including one for the perfect Madeline cookies) when I have time (which might not be this week, judging from the calendar).
Italian Cucidatti (filled fig-orange-cocoa) cookies, Rugelach, Chocolate Cherry cookies, Play Dough cookie cutouts, Light Chai Shortbread Slices, Nutcracker Mice and Santa, Coconut Macaroons, Snickers-filled Peanut Butter cookies, Play Dough shaped-trees cookies, Madeline cookies, and Oatmeal Coconut cookies. That's all for now.

Gramma Sartor Santas

Last year at Christmas, our friend Linda gave us a plate of these adorable Santa cookies. The kids (well, really all of us) loved them. So this morning, I got everything ready to make some. To do the Santa faces, frost the entire cookie with white frosting, then cover the bottom half of the cookie with flaked coconut. Sprinkle a crescent of red sugar on the top of the cookie for his hat, with a mini marshmallow for the ball at the tip of the hat. We used red M&M's cut in half for the noses (red hots are the "traditional" nose though, but M&M's was what I had), and chocolate chips for eyes. I think Madeline's turned out pretty cute too (with "rosy chocolate cheeks", and "little red feets" at the bottom of his beard.) Erik, and our friend Ben, did the boy-thing of pouring as many topping on their cookies as possible, and sampling the rest.
For the sugar cookie, I decided to use my Great Gramma Sartor's Sour Cream Sugar Cookie recipe. It's wonderful and pretty easy (and a slice and bake recipe, giving us good rounds for the faces).
I'm not even typing the recipe in — just click on it to make it bigger! I love to see her hand writing, and it's even in red... how fun for the holidays.