Meagan's Flavors of the Holidays: Gingerbread Cookies and Holiday Sugar Cookies
I'm back with some new recipes I tried out for another edition of Meagan's Flavors of the Holidays! Since I'm living back at home, I have been able to spend more time baking from my friends and family giving me lots of opportunities to try out so many new recipes. For weeks now, I have been scouring the Instagram explore page trying to find inspiration for this years Christmas cookies. I have saved posts upon posts of various Holiday cookies that I potentially wanted to bake. But I finally narrowed down what types I wanted to bake and can't wait to share them with you.
When I was younger, one of my favorite Christmas activities to do during the holidays was to make gingerbread houses. As much as I loved decorating the houses, I hated actually building them because for some reason I could never get them to stay standing. So thinking back on this memory I decided I had to take another stab at making some form of gingerbread. It was time to make gingerbread people!
I tried out Sally's Baking Addiction Gingerbread recipe and they were soooo good! When I bake something, I only normally just eat a few of them. But this time I probably ate closer to 10 of these cookies. They weren't hard like a typical gingerbread cookie, instead they had a soft centre and with the perfect amount of sweetness.
Probably my favorite part about making these gingerbread cookies was decorating them. I was worried they would take me forever to decorate because I probably made close to 100 gingerbread people. But the decorating took next to no time to make into the cutest little ginger people! This is one recipe I definitely be making again for next year for Christmas!
Next up for Megs Christmas cookies were Holiday Sugar Cookies! I recently went to the Kitchen Stuff Plus warehouse sale and bought a TON of new Christmas cookie cutters. After taking probably way too long, I picked some of my favorite cookie cutters (star, candy cane, stocking, snowflake, snowman, present, Christmas tree) - and after typing out that list I realized I really didn't narrow down what shapes of cookies I would make.
I used the same sugar cookie recipe in my Halloween post, which I made for my brother's students in his class. His report back to me was that they were a hit with his students, so I figured I should try it again, but this time adding in some almond extract. This additional flavoring made them taste more like a shortbread, which is probably my mom's and brother's absolute favorite type of cookie.
One of the reasons I love baking cupcakes is that I get to pick the way I pipe the icing and how to decorate it with sprinkles or other various toppings. So for me, decorating these cookies with royal icing was very exciting! These cookies weren't the biggest so that didn't leave me much room to decorate, but Perfectionist-Meagan was up to the challenge! Now as it was my first time really delving into decorating using royal icing and to tell you the truth it was probably the most difficult baking task to date. However, by the end of my batch, I got the hang of it and I can't wait to make more cookies and decorating with royal icing.
Now after a whole weekend of baking and decorating probably close to 200 cookies for my friends and family, I am done with baking for the year of 2017. It is crazy how this year is already coming to an end, but I mean I say that every year. I am really looking forward to sharing more of my adventures through baking, Toronto expeditions and of course school with all of my readers.
Check back real soon as I share with you my first time going to the Christmas Market in the Distillery District! Thanks again for reading more about a Glimpse of Meagan's Journey!
