'Twas the night before the night before the night before Christmas, and all through the home,Every few years, I get a bout of insanity, and decide to bake something as that year's Christmas present. Since I have a fairly large extended family, if we had to buy a significant (i.e. $20+) Christmas present for every single family member, we'd all go broke, and fill our houses with junk while we're at it. Instead, we've all agreed that we'll just get each other something small, and rather than having to personalise each gift, it's acceptable to get everyone the same gift.
There was lots of stirring, 'til well after gloam.
The eggs were beaten, to fill them with air,
In the hopes that my presents, show that I care.
Before I was married, I still feel under the umbrella of my parents, so I was able to piggyback off their gifts. Now that MrFodder and I are our own independent "unit", we are now part of the gift-giving tradition. In 2013, I decided to bake cookies (milo, mars bar and sablé).
Hundreds of cookies later, I said to myself, "I'm never doing this again." To the extent that I bought pre-gift wrapped presents last year, which is huge for me, because I find it ridiculous to pay someone else to do something I can easily do myself. And we have kilometres of Christmas wrapping paper from Costco that we need to get through...
Three years later, I seem to have completely forgotten that lesson, because I feel compelled to repeat that mistake. And the family has grown.
Current status is 6 batches in, and I feel like there's no end in sight.
At least this year, I've streamlined the process, having made all the dough the night before, so it's just a matter of spooning it out and baking it. I've got a process where I'm pre-scooping the cookie dough into balls, putting them into another container (so it has time to cool down again before baking), and rotating through the different batches so none of them spend too long out of the fridge at once (again, to keep it all cold).
This means that I can write blog posts or play Stardew Valley while the cookies bake. Unlike what I did in 2013, where I was fumbling with timers, while trying to measure things, and having to stop mixing part-way to pull the cookies out of the oven.
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Post-baking addition:
Unfortunately, it all didn't go to plan, as I managed to factor in baking time correctly, even giving myself an extra two hours to account for longer bake time, but I didn't factor in the time it takes the cookies to cool, so I had a period where there wasn't enough space on the cooling racks and I had to wait a bit before I could keep baking. Still, my last couple of sheets of cookies were larger than normal, so you can tell I've lost interest and just want to get it over and done with as quickly as possible, but it has been pretty smooth this year. I even had enough time to have a shower before we needed to meet MrFodder's parents for Christmas Eve eve dinner!
Final count: 348 cookies.
I think the reason why I keep coming back to wanting to make something as a gift is because some of my extended family members do it, and I feel bad about my low-effort gifts in return. But right now, I'm back at that, "I'm never doing this again feeling". Will I ever learn?
Anyway, to all my wonderful readers who have stayed with me this far through the year, I wish you a safe and happy seasonal holiday of your choosing. Only a week left to go...!
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