every year.
every year i’m like “next year, we aren’t making all of these cookies”.
and then twelve months pass by. the christmas chaos cortisol settles. the sugar is detoxed. a new holiday season is upon us. and before i know it, i’m six different recipes and 15 dozen cookies deep, and even though sugar cookies are the most labor intensive, i’m like “it’s not christmas without a josh allen gingerbread man and an assortment of unhinged creations made by my weird children”…
and that’s how this tale begins.
this year though. i didn’t make 120+ sugar cookies to decorate. i made 38.
and. we went with buttercream instead of glaze, optimizing for flavor and control, sacrificing sprinkle stickiness and efficiency.
with each of us responsible for only 12-13 cookies each, we were able to pay attention to detail and make every single one a masterpiece.
without further ado, here are our 2025 creations.
anna mostly went with a stranger things theme (the tree is my subtle favorite), but added in some outsiders musical cookies, a conan gray record, a beloved chicken tribute, and one traditional christmas cookie, acceptable for gift plate usage.
hazel’s were a little more, well, weird. we’ll call them creative. personally, i love the josh allen end zone dive ON the standing buffalo shaped cookie. and the potato buffalo logo on the tree farm truck. but my favorite has to be the rainbow unicorn(?) blob in the bottom right.
i was quite pleased with my creations. i had to make some that were fit for gifting, since, well you know, you saw what came from the brains of my children. but mostly, i went with a lot of the themes of previous years.
and since this is my blog and i took closeups of my favorites, please indulge me as i tell you about them in what is likely entirely too much detail.
first of all. we have a dion dawkins “shnowman”. and i’ve decided that from now on all ball ornament cookies will become records (or cd’s, i guess?). this year, it was only appropriate that i make a killers record. they have been the soundtrack to my life during a somewhat rocky year.
of course there were ruby likenesses. and every year we make these stupid reindeer shapes and then we all fight over who gets stuck with them. i handled one. (hazel turned the other into ruby).
we pride ourselves on our ability to turn christmas shapes into various other themes, as well as our talent for turning random shapes into christmas themes. for example, most gingerbread men, nutcrackers and snowmen will be converted to pop culture figures (usually bills related). while we can make a unicorn into the most beautiful christmas cookie of the whole batch.
finally. my favorite two. i turned a gingerbread man shape into a crude gym bro. maybe it was me? the candy canes made perfect beats ear buds. and we will never not have a snowglobe that doesn’t feature josh allen heroics.
also. if you’re wondering. i kept the other confections to a reasonable amount this year as well, giving out plates to only a handful of friends instead of running myself ragged delivering plates all over the county). there were cranberry orange pinwheels, snowballs, ginger molasses, chocolate peppermint, m&m, turtle thumbprints, and everyone’s favorite, magic seven layer bars.
i took a plate to my gym, which obviously included the gym bro and josh allen. but my favorite delivery recipient was the muncy fam. i almost just put the cookies on their porch and texted that they were there, but then decided to ring the bell, and let me tell you. i was not disappointed. cliff answered the door dressed up like an actual christmas tree, giving us a full jolt of holiday spirit.
with the sugar cookie decorating checked off the list, it was time to turn our attention to gingerbread houses. this year, in an effort to control my holiday stress, i bought premade houses. unfortunately, the icing that comes with them is garbage, so i ended up whipping up real royal icing, because this is serious business. as usual, i over purchased the decor supplies. maybe next year i won’t.
as is her yearly tradition, anna went to the dark side. this year’s murder gingerbread house was stranger things themed. of course. eddie on the roof shredding on his guitar is my fave.
hazel, who tends to mildly borrow from anna’s ideas, also opted for a murder scene. however, she took it a different direction, and there was maybe a frog plague involved? murder frogs? i’m not sure. i find the “ribbit” quite ominous though.
i accidentally ordered two entire tubs of gum drops. so i did what an frugal contractor would do and used up as many as i could in this construction project. it was actually quite zen to just sit and methodically press these into the icing. i used one entire tub and part of the second, and maybe ate like 100 or so in the process.
so. that’s it for 2025’s sugar related decorating activities.
we kept it in check enough that i don’t feel the need to say “next year i’m not doing this”.
that’s the real christmas miracle.