Sunday Christmas Baking - Round 3

Well, you've got to be tired of hearing it (feel free to tell me to stop whining in the comments), but I'm behind again in my posts.  There are these silly folks around that actually expect me to do social things around Christmas time ... go figure?

Anyway - since I started these baking posts I figured I might as well continue on with the latest batch of baking.

This Sunday it included "Chocolate Peanut Butter (filled) Snowballs".  I don't know what happened but I ran out of filling before I ran out of dough so the few cookies on the bottom are simply "Left-over Dough Butter Cookies" with a few sprinkles on top ... they must have been all right because they disappeared quickly enough.

Then, for the first time I attempted "Cherry Chocolate Rugalah".  They turned out well, but I had to get the hang of rolling them properly and the first batch turned out too big.  No worries, they'll go on the dessert table instead of into the gift packages.

My son-in-law loves "Pineapple Kipfel".  They are a kinda-sorta butter dough filled with pineapple.  His Oma used to make them for him every Christmas (as did my mother when I was growing up).  When his Oma passed away I took over making them for him so he wouldn't miss out.  It was a bit of a challenge since I didn't have a recipe to go by.  Consequently there were a few hit and miss years until I finally figured it out to get the taste and texture right.  This year's batch looks like the best ones and it's the recipe I'll stick to from now on.

I live in a little house and although the kitchen is a fair size it has VERY LIMITED counter space, so since it was a disaster zone anyway and I had some bananas that were a couple of hours away from being zombie bananas I decided to make some "Banana Pistachio Muffins" (okay - they are supposed to be Banana Walnut Muffins but I ran out of walnuts and had some pistachios left over so I improvised).

And lest you think I was kidding about the kitchen being a disaster zone ...

BUT ... I did clean up!!

AND ... I managed to get the tree up.

Saturday I am going to make two small batches of cookies that do not freeze well (so cannot be made too far in advance) and on Sunday I am going to make my Chocolate Baklava.  It is the costliest thing on my list of home made gifts and only a select few (by request) get a small container - the rest is for the dessert table at our family and friends Christmas dinner.

Then they'll all get packaged up ready for delivery throughout the week.  No doubt next year I'll again decide that it's too much work ... and probably do it all over again anyway!