well, i AM a baker

i remember my childhood christmas baking days...covering the dining room table with newspapers to allow the rows and rows of cookies and chex mix to cool. then we mixed a variety of colors of homemade frosting and went to town on the cookie cutter sugar cookies. mom made a variety of other things too...chex mix always...sometimes caramel corn. all sorts of things.

i love just about every kind of cookie. but this time of year i tend to focus my baking on 'treats' rather than all cookies. well, tonight, i finished a majority of my baking duties for the season (we have two treat trays 'due' tomorrow and are leaving for vacation for a week, so had to get it done!)

here's the rundown on what our lucky neighbors and christmas party attendees will be enjoying:

chex mix, duh. a necessity. well into january. made 2 buckets.

7 layer bars - some of my favorites, and jason doesn't like coconut, so i get them to myself. the 7 layers you ask? butter, cinnamon graham cracker crust, butterscotch chips, chocolate chips, coconut, pecans and drizzled with sweetened condensed milk.

i needed a way to use up some of my extra white chocolate (see chocolate covered pretzels below)...so i 'drew' some snowmen and snowflakes in white chocolate and 'decorated' them. just a little decoration for the treat trays.
these are saltine chocolate things...yum. you will notice a distinct chocolate theme in pretty much everything i made. next comes s'mores and turtles. s'mores are chocolate dipped marshmallows rolled in crushed graham crackers - made 2 BAGS of marshmallows worth. the turtles are pretzels with melted rolos on top and then squashed with pecan halves. i made some nut-less versions too...hmmm...nutless turtles. poor guys.

chocolate covered pretzels - the twists are milk chocolate and the rods are white, some decorated with colored sugar or the holly sugar thingys (technical baking terms). i do have some dark chocolate ones i was going to make, but it's midnight, so um...not happening tonight.

bring on the peanut butter - these ones i make for jason (which are his favorite next to 'candy cane cookies' that only his loving mother has the patience to make for him) peanut butter blossoms and peanut butter cup cookies.

and the piece de resistance....
bohemian butter cookies...
which to me look like snowy stained glass windows of yumminess

these are by far the most labor intensive of all the treats i make...real butter cookies, sandwiched with raspberry jam and dusted with powdered sugar...they are worth every ounce of work i put in to them.

there you have it. 2007 christmas baking in review.