Cookies

There is something about this time of year that makes me want to bake, bake, bake! We have been busy baking in our house the last couple of days.  Kevin volunteered to make cookies for a charity bake sale at work, I have a cookie exchange this week, and there were just some new recipes I wanted to try. Kevin decided for his work he wanted to make sopapilla cheesecake  and Cream cheese bars. These are two of our favorite treats in our house, they are very yummy.  If you are looking for yummy recipes you should check out my sister in law's blog McMania, she is always cooking up something yummy. Most of the recipes that I make that you all love have come from her!  Anyway, I don't usually blog my cooking expeditions, so stick with me.

The first cookie I wanted to try is called an Icebox cookie. My friend Mandy in SC makes these and I found the recipe in my Good Housekeeping Christmas Cookie swap cookbook so I had to give it a go. The first thing I needed was a good assistant...

In case you can't tell, he was helping me shell the pistachios...

For this recipe you will need:
5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour               2 cups sugar
1 tsp baking soda                              2 eggs
1/4 tsp Salt                                       2 tsp almond extract
2 cups butter softened                       2/3 cup shelled pistachios finely chopped

After we shelled and chopped the pistachios we (or Chase) whisked together the flour, baking soda, and salt...

 Then with the mixer at medium speed we beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Then we added the eggs and almond extract and beat until well blended. Chase was proud of the almond extract...

Then on low speed we beat in the flour mixture until blended.  Then to get into the Christmas spirit we split the dough in half and added red food coloring to one and the pistachios and green food coloring to the other...

Then we covered the bottom of two loaf pans with plastic wrap and spread half the green dough into the bottom of each pan. We then placed it in the freezor for 10 minutes to set...

Then we covered with the remaining red dough and covered with plastic wrap and placed in the fridge overnight.  Then using a serrated knife we cut the dough crosswise into 1/4 inch thick slices, then cut each slice crosswise into 3 cookies. We placed the cookies on a cookie sheet and baked at 350 for 10 minutes. This is what we ended up with...

YUM! Pretty red and green for Christmas. Well mine are pink and green because I ran out of red food coloring, but you get the point.  More baking to come soon...