Christmas Baking

So last weekend I got together with three of my best friends from college and we baked six batches of cookies!  Now, we didn't get too crazy with the recipes - but we did get crazy with the decorating!  As the day went on we got even more craftier and by the time we were done we were rivaling Pepperidge Farms.

First we started with sugar cookies with rasberry jam and melted white chocolate...these were a tie for the best cookie in my mind...I loved the jam!

One of my friend brought a cookie press with her that she had never used.  We broke it out and played with it a bit - the ones that came out the best were these lady finger type cookies and the flowers.  

Then the decorating started.  We made a bunch with cookie cutters, mixed up some colored frosting, and went to town....here of some of my favorites.

We had fun with all the icing, but after several hours of baking and decorating we kind of wanted to just finish up and clean up.  So we decided go melt some chocolate chips and start dipping and sandwiching and slathering it everywhere.  Then we really got creative and chopped up some walnuts to add to the backs of cookies.

The cookies with the walnuts and chocolate were my other favorites!   Mmm so good!

All in all, we were very proud of ourselves!  Here is a picture of most of the decorated cookies!

One more cookie baking session on Christmas Eve with my mother.  We will be making traditional Norwegian Christmas cookies called Krumkakes (crumb-kaagaaz) and making them is intense!  What cookies or baked good are traditional for your family?