Pavlina: Life is Not For the Living

Hmpfh! I am not impressed! Not one little bit. I have been signed up for the Food Network’s 12 days of cookies since they started it, back in 2004. Okay, not like that has been that long, but really! This year I had ZERO desire to make any of these cookies. I take my holiday baking seriously, people. I make home-made, from scratch baked delights. They must taste good and looked wonderful. I want people to bite into these and think, “this is the greatest cookie in the world, I want to eat these until my stomach ruptures.” That kind of serious baking. So what did we get this year?

1. Alton’s Paradise Macaroon – regular ole’ macaroons with chocolate and macadamia nuts on top.
2. Paula’s Pistachio Linzertorte with Cherry Jam – Not a linzertorte but linzer cookies, with pistachio instead of hazelnut and cherry instead of raspberry. Whatever. The entire point of “Linzer torte or cookie, the person just understand they will get hazelnuts and raspberry. Seems a cruel twisted joke to substitute pistachio and cherry, yet still call it Linzer. just call it Paula’s Pistachio cookie with cherry jam, or something like that. Please.
3. Gingerbread cookies – No molasses! Good for those that can’t stomach molasses I suppose, a bit useless for the rest of us.
4. Giada’s Peppermint-Chocolate Sandwich cookies – this one looked interesting, but was made with store-bought cookie dough. No thanks. Remember the stomach rupture? These will be okay cookies, but they will not be great cookies. They will look great, but taste okay. I hope.
   
5. Aida Mollenkamp’s Hazlenut tea Cookies- These look truly like the old standby Russian tea cakes but these have hazelnut instead of pecan.
   Honestly, these could be worth a try if I were planning on making tea cakes this year, which I won’t. The ingredient list is: Flour, powdered sugar, butter, vanilla, salt and toasted, chopped hazelnuts.
6. Tyler’s Chocolate Covered Snow Peaks – Meringue cookies dipped in chocolate. Yawn.
7. Cherry Berry Bars –
   
   The description for these is

   These Cherry Berry Bars are a very merry update to the holiday fruitcake. While both treats have the same classic spiced scent, Sunny swirls hers with vibrant berry preserves and dusts them with powdered sugar.

   These actually sound okay, but they aren’t quite up my alley. I have nothing against these, however.

8. Chocolate Shortbread with White Chocolate Sauce – Chocolate shortbread? Just say no. ‘Nuff said.
9. The Neely” Candy cane Cookies – You know what? These are actually okay, on second pass.
   
   The only thing that would possible concern me is all that food coloring making the dough taste nasty. I would totally make these if I didn’t already have plans for another highly colored cookie thing. Maybe next year.
10. Paula’s Snowflake Cookies – I’ve seen these in various variations since the dawn of cookie making. These makes gorgeous cookies. They are just not unique is all. No.
11. Duff’s Black and White Cookie – *yawn* another variation of the black and white cookie. This is a any old time cookie, not very holiday themed. I pass.
12. Sandra’s Stained Glass Wreath Cookie – Sacrilege! The ingredient list:
    tube sugar cookie dough
    round hard candies (recommend life savers)
    small tube decorator icing
    1 package silver dragees
    24 8″ long pieces of ribbon or string

    What is this? A recipe for a class project? This was a recipe put out by Food Network? “Go buy a tube of sugar cookie dough, cut out circles, put a candy inside, bake, cut a small hole on top using a straw, put dots of icing around the candy then put the silver dragees on.” No. NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!! that’s all I’ll say about that.
    
    They look pretty though.

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