Happy New Year! 

Okay, this is the last thing I’m going to say on the subject of cookies for the immediate future, and I wouldn’t even be discussing this, except I just ate two lemon pecan cookies and, even though they are a twelfth night old, my goodness they are DELICIOUS!  In fact, I have to say I can’t imagine anything more perfect than a tumble of these gems and a good cup of tea. Unprepossessing in appearance perhaps, but so fresh and lemony, so explosively good….well, suffice it to say, I may survive January just knowing where these darlings are stowed.  Honestly, if you have it in you to bake one more cookie, or if it snows, or if you just want to make something, anything--make these.  And a touch of Jane Austen wouldn’t hurt either, now that I think about it.

I realize that as I’m making each one of my Christmas cookies, I proclaim it to be THE BEST ONE OF ALL!  Okay, so here’s today’s BEST ONE OF ALL…..I have to say, it was originally Martha’s recipe, but, as you can imagine, it was WAY too fussy for my taste, so here it is, easy as can be, Christmas on a plate.  And FYI, I think Santa is particularly fond of these too. 

COOKIES!

Hurray!  It’s time for one of my favorite culinary OCD attacks of the year.  I make ten kinds of Christmas cookies every year.  I make the same ten kinds every year, and I make many, many dozens of each one.  I realized that if I make ten dozen of each one, then I make 1,200 individual cookies in the last week or so before Christmas.  I wonder if there’s any help for my condition?  I guess that’s why they call it Obsessive Cookie Disorder.

I have long hankered for just the thing to eat on Thanksgiving morning.  It needs to be quickly and easily whipped up and served to the non-cooks who then need to go for a walk, go watch the parade, or do whatever they want, but most importantly, get out of the kitchen! Serious business is afoot.

Ah, pumpkin muffins.  The thing is, I baked my way through four recipes that I found and didn’t like any of them. First of all, I feel strongly that they need to be really pumpkiny.  Some had applesauce in lieu of some of the pumpkin and then they weren’t appropriately orange and that kind of defeated the whole point as far as I’m concerned.   A couple called for cream cheese frosting on top.  Now to me, that turns them into a cupcake, and I’m really not a proponent of cupcakes for breakfast.  Not that I don’t want a party going on up top…I most assuredly do!   Some of them made mingy little things.  Not good enough.  I want a big, bold muffin….big enough, in fact, to keep them out of my hair until time for THE MEAL.