Eight Bakers Baking

Christmas Cookie Bake-off 2014 is now in the books and what a good one it was. All the fun started at 9 a.m. Saturday morning and the mixing, rolling, baking, filling and packing carried on 'til 5:30 p.m. - a full day with lots and lots of cookies to show for our efforts.

Both Emily and Meghan were sporting new holiday aprons bought specially and 'Auntie Betty' had hers decked out with red ribbons.

Betty's husband Steve is a bit of a card. He spent a little time online researching noise level at NFL stadiums and hockey arenas and posted this to the side of the fridge; he seemed to be betting that we might be able to best one of them as the day wore on. :)

We didn't keep an exact tally but there were at least 12 different recipes prepped.

With double batches of a few favourites made I'm thinking that we came away with at least 16, maybe 18, batches in total.

Most of the usual suspects were there but Jane and Frances didn't make it this year. It was Anne's first bake-off and Stephanie was able to join us again, so with Jen and the girls we had eight bakers working all out for the day. Baylea was in charge of quality control and kept a watchful eye on everyone.











Jen really found her niche in 'shipping and receiving' this year - dividing up the spoils five ways and carefully packing everyone's treats in tins.

Emily took some time out to capture a few photos on her iPad for posterity...

...another pan of Toblerone shortbread fresh from the oven...

Mother Bauer's Butter Rum Cookies ready to be baked...

and Stephanie quickly perfecting the art of buttered rum filling.








It was a full day but a wonderful time spent with family and friends - such a great tradition. Meghan had the great idea to film this short stop action video which will give you a sense of how some of the day went - take a peek.

I had hoped to get my tree up on the weekend too but we didn't get it until today. It's defrosting in the stand and filling the house with its wonderful fragrance as carols play. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....M