"I just figured if I was going to make the world a better place, I’d do it with cookies."  ~ Ana Pascal, Stranger than Fiction

It's easier for me to imagine a Christmas without Santa than it is to imagine the holiday without cookies. When I was a kid my mom baked and sold over 25 different varieties of Christmas cookies. In just seven days we would turn out 500 dozen from a single oven in our awkward, run-down kitchen. And when it was over I couldn't stand to look at a cookie let alone eat one.

I swore that holiday baking for me would end when college began. But when I got a house off campus and needed cash for Christmas presents guess how I raised it. Yep, baking cookies. My Senior year I made 200 dozen in 36 sleepless hours. And took another vow to NEVER bake another cookie.

I kept my word for about 360 days. Then I got out the bowls and recipes and started again in my grad school apartment. Christmas cookies are in my blood, and, try as I might, there's no shaking them. Christmas just isn't Christmas without cookies.  

Today, I bake because I want to and fortunately not because I have to. Like Surly most of what I bake I give as gifts, which amps up the fun factor too.

My cookie list for 2009 is pretty ambitious, and thanks to the Open Call responses I've already read, it's growing. Some years I run out of time or energy or both before I finish baking everything on the list. This year, I'm going to keep the oven hot until I run out of sugar!

Reese’s Peanut Butter Temptations
Italian Fig Cookies
Baklava
Swedish Cremes
Melting Moments
Coconut Haystacks
Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti
Peanut Butter Balls
Gingersnaps with White Chocolate and Crystallized Ginger
White Chocolate, Cranberry and Macadamia Nut Cookies
Truffles with Ancho Chile and Cinnamon
Pecan Shortbread
Nutmeg Logs
Scottish Shortbread with Cardamom
Double Nut and Date Tassies
Nut Roll
Shortbread Thumbelinas with Chocolate Ganache
Iced Sugar Cookies
Pecan Tassies
Clothes Pins
Trios

A few notes about the cookies and recipes:

1. The recipes for the cookies without hyperlinks are in my mom's recipe box.
2. Of course I will be making Martha's Sugar Cookies this year instead of my mom's - thanks femme forte!
3. Bird argues (with my sister) that the Reese's Temptations are more than just peanut butter dough around a Reese Cup, a sum greater than its parts. I say give me shortbread any day!
4. I skip the baklava and Trios when I'm short on patience.
5. Shhhh--Bird likes my cookies better than his mom's.
6. If I could only bake one cookie on this list it would be the Italian Fig Cookies...or maybe the Pecan Shortbread...or the Nutmeg Logs....