Definitely not a Baking Blog

So, I've been doing some Christmas baking in the last week or so, and it has reminded me of why, although I bake all the time, I don't write a food blog.

First, there is the fact that my kids mostly like the same three kinds of cookies. I don't know how many posts I could do about chocolate chip cookies, molasses cookies and oatmeal muffins. It might get a little stale.

Second, there is the fact that there is anywhere from between one and four "helpers" with me when I bake. This means that decorating often looks like this:

 And turns out like this:

 While it is fun to eat these sugar cookies (okay, it WAS fun to eat them . . . Christmas cookies never last until Christmas around here) and it was fun to make them, they're not exactly photogenic. And to me, that's okay. The making and eating was the part that matters.

Then, there is what happens when I try a new recipe. They were supposed to look like these ones , but instead mine were these giant, strangely shaped stripe-y things.

 Of course, these were meant for a cookie exchange, so I cut the rest of the batches in half and formed them into nicer, more elegant cookies for my lovely mom friends:

 I baked a double batch of sugar cookies, in order to make the above pepermint cookies and a batch of normal sugar cookies, as I thought they would be fun for Emma to throw icing and sprinkles on. They were, but I decided that the problem with sugar cookies is that they're not really worth the amount of calories they cost.

 Don't get me wrong. I ate these. I ate many. But they are more of a conduit of icing than something that I would normally eat for its own sake. I think next year if I'm going to buy and use and consume that much butter again, I'm going to make shortbread.

Fortunately for my sons' teachers, I also decided to make some of this peppermint bark. This stuff if really good, and I like to think it at least somewhat compensates for having to teach my children.

We also made our yearly batch of gingerbread, but it was  a bit of a bust. I used margerine in a recipe that called for butter and the dough was so crumbly that we could hardly get our shapes to stay together long enough to get to the pan. I told them to pretend to be thrilled, even though our dough was falling apart:

 The highlight of this baking disaster (aside from getting to sit on the table while wearing chain mail) was getting to try out our ninjabread men cookie cutters. Andrew (mr. white-belt-with-one-yellow-stripe) was excited that the ninjas are actually doing poses he's learning in Tae Qwon-Do.

 I might consider making a second batch over Christmas holidays if we get too stir crazy. As an alternative to, say, hitting our brother in the head with things to see what hurts the most or teaching the baby how to defend himself from light sabre blows.