Brrrrrr...

We've been in the middle of an unseasonably chilly cold snap for the past several days (can you say -32 Celsius with the wind chill?) so the weekend seemed to be a good time to stay close to the oven and see if I could finish off my Christmas baking.

Having a deadline of this Friday to deliver our Christmas tins was an added incentive, but the biggest was to empty this laundry hamper. I had loaded my baking supplies into it for the bakeoff a couple of weekends ago and knew that I would be using lots of the ingredients before all the baking was done, so it's been on the floor in the kitchen ever since, slowly being emptied.

I have to say that it proved to be two very productive days. Saturday I got 5 batches made up and yesterday another 4. I would have made one more batch but had to shovel for two hours last night as the Official Cookie Tester was feeling under the weather.

Lots  of the old favourites like Pecan Shortbreads and Tiny Fudge Tartlets, but also a few that I haven't made in a year or two, like Martha Stewart's Chocolate Crinkles...

and a shortbread with cranberries and orange that you bake as a square. This time around I added candied ginger to them and then sprinkled some over top before drizzling it with white chocolate - reminiscent of Starbuck's Christmas squares, but not as sweet.

My kitchen is a disaster but I'm down to a couple of pans of Social Tea Squares, then Pecan Tassies and possibly a batch of Toblerone Shortbread, and then that will be it except for the strawberry cream puffs for Christmas eve. Almost time to empty the hamper...M