Cookies and Balls

Most of this weekend was spent making cookies for the holidays. This year, the chosen cookies were as follows:

Spritz: A family staple, in vanilla and almond varieties. Spritz are easy to make with a cookie press. My Nana used to send me huge tins of these when I was in college. They rarely lasted more than one day! They are my personal favorite.

Spritz with cinnamon!


Green Tree Spritz!


Raspberry Thumbprints: I bought the holiday edition of Cook's Illustrated and immediately wanted to make everything in this issue. These cookies were featured, and they taste excellent. I liked their hint to bake the cookies for 10 mins, then take them out of the oven, define the thumbprints with the back of a teaspoon, fill, and bake completely. They turned out wonderfully!

Thumbprints!


Rosemary Butter Cookies: My friend Meg handed these out a few years ago, and we all asked for the recipe. Lucky for us, these cookies won the Baltimore Sun Baking Challenge, so all we had to do was pick up a paper! These are requested each year and have become a new tradition in my family.

Rosemary Butter Cookies!


Peanut Butter Balls: My friend Meri is the queen of cookie making. Her cookies always taste the best, and she makes kick ass peanut butter balls. This year, she was nice enough to pass the recipe on to me. I think they came out pretty well considering this was my first time ever making candy!

Peanut Butter Balls Before Dipping!


Covered in Chocolate!


After everything was made, I packaged some for giving to co-workers, friends, and family. I found cute takeout containers at Target for the candy!

Packaged cookies!


Take-out boxes!