About this time every year, my sister begins to feverishly bake Christmas cookie after Christmas cookie. There are the old standards she makes every year – but she also hunts up a few new recipes each year to try out.

And a few years ago she started holding cookie parties to share the joy & load of baking & decorating that many cookies.

The day would be spent between eating the unbaked dough, decorating the freshly baked cookies & snitching a few of the completed ones – just to make sure they came out right. Because you know, you just can’t give someone a cookie that didn’t come out right.

The Christmas music would be playing,  the oven would be going full steam, our cumulative blood sugar would be rising, we’d be dust-covered in flour from head to toe & at the end of the day everyone got to take home some of everything.

Since I can’t be home this year to show off my anti-culinary yet highly artistic prowess, I’m going to have to make my own. And I need some help figuring out what all to bake this year.

Last year my big cookie contribution was Martha-inspired Speculaas Cookies…similar to the windmill cookies you can buy in the supermarket…very spicy, not so sweet & very dense.

The dough consistency was great for stamping impressions into or for shaping into all sorts of overly ornate cookie art masterpieces….like my holly leaves above – which would’ve been really cool with little cinnamon red hots to poke into the ends to act as holly berries, but we didn’t have any.

I can usually make a mean gingerbread man, too…I just can’t seem to screw up cookie dough that doesn’t really rise. Apparently my medium is cookie dough the equivalent of play-dough.

So yes…I’m gonna need help this year coming up with recipes I can’t screw up, that look pretty, that utilizes ingredients I can get over here & most importantly that taste good – because I’m going to be giving cookies to the Lumber Barons, the Custodian & his wife, the guys at OMG (the auto mechanic shop that did us a big favor over the summer)…and a few others.

If you have a recipe you’re willing to share or one you’ve tried that’s listed online that you can give me the link to, I would greatly appreciate it.

And while I’m asking for stuff…does anybody know if 7Up is making this stuff again this year?…The pomegranate 7Up? It’s obviously not coming to a commissary near me anytime in near future, but I would love you forever if you would smuggle in a can or two of the Diet version to me.

But here you go…the Speculaas Cookie recipe & tips I learned the hard way:

SPECULAAS COOKIES

• 3 1/2 Cups All-Purpose Flour
• 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 1 1/2 tsp Cinnanmon
• 1 tsp Ginger
• 1/4 tsp Nutmeg
• 3/4 tsp Cardamon*
• 1/4 tsp Mace*
• 1/4 tsp Ground White Pepper
• Pinch of Cloves
• 6 ounces (1 1/2 sticks) Unsalted Butter, softened
• 1 Cup Light Brown Sugar (packed)
• 1/3 Cup Water
• Powdered Sugar for dusting

*I didn’t have Cardamon or Mace so I just used more of the other spices to make up for it.

COMBINE THE INGREDIENTS

1. Combine all the dry ingredients into a bowl & whisk together to combine.
2. Cream the butter & brown sugar until light & fluffy.
3. Beat in half of the flour mixture. Then beat in the water. Then beat in the rest of the flour mixture & pray your mixer’s little engine doesn’t burn out.
4. Divide the dough into 3 portions – beat it flat into pancakes, plastic wrap it & stick it in the fridge for an hour to firm up more.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO USE A COOKIE MOLD

• Check the dough’s consistency. It really shouldn’t be sticky at all. If it is, add more flour in little by little until it’s no longer sticky.
• Roll it out flat somewhere between 1/4″ and 3/8″ – depending on how deep your mold is.
• Dust the mold really good with powdered sugar & dust the dough’s surface a little too – you don’t want it to stick to the mold. It needs to come out nice & clean.
• Press your mold into the dough – pound on it, roll it, whatever works best to make sure you get a good impression without punching the mold all the way down to the table surface.
• Lift up carefully, cut out your impression with a knife & gently place on a baking sheet.
• Repeat until you’re blue in the face or until you’re tired of pressing that dang mold.
• Keep the cookies about an inch apart on the sheet & freeze until they’re really firm – about an hour.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO CUT THEM OUT WITH COOKIE CUTTERS

• Roll the dough flat until it’s somewhere between 1/4″ and 3/8″ thick.
• Cut out your shapes – you can even use a toothpick to draw swirls or names or polka dots into the cookie.
• Put them about an inch apart on a cookie sheet & freeze them for up to an hour to get the dough really firm.

BAKING THE COOKIES

• Preheat the oven to 325 degrees
• Place one sheet of cookies into the oven & immediately reduce the heat to 250.
• Bake one sheet at a time for 55 – 65 minutes.
• When the edges are just turning a light gold, they’re done.