Tuesday, December 8, 2009

The Twelve-Day Snowbound Cookie Challenge

Last night, in the span of time between 9:30 and 10:30 pm which separates my daughter's bedtime from my own, I invented a new holiday tradition: The Twelve-Day Snowbound Cookie Challenge. The rules of the challenge, also invented on the spot, are as follows:

- 12 days (and 12 nights), 12 different types of cookies. Multiple recipes can be fully executed on the same day, but this is discouraged. For example, last night I got my batch of chocolate crinkles (yum!) up to the "chill overnight" phase, and stopped. Tonight, I'll bake them, and get another batch of cookies up to the "chill overnight" stage.

- Bake from your grocery stockpile, and only from your stockpile! Make do with what you have already on hand. In my case, this means no molasses, no coconut, no candied fruit...and honestly, not a ton of granulated sugar, cinnamon, or eggs. So this is going to be a challenge in the true sense of the word....for now, I'm going by recipes, but once I start running out of things, all bets are off...

- And for next year....don't pick out the recipes in advance! Recipes should only be selected once the challenge has begun. This is a subtle way that a sneaky contestant might avoid the "stockpile only" rule.....no cheating, no peeking, nope nope.

So there you have it. Pretend you've got serious cookie (or as my 1960s era cook book says, cooky...) debts to pay, but you're snowbound and have to work with what you have.

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