Sunday’s productive cooking results: 8-dozen pecan tassies for family gift boxes, an 8x8 pan of thin cake for us to use up the leftover tassie filling and shaping flour, plus a batch of Crispix mix for us (no pretzels, 2 C of unsalted nuts & lightly salted cashews).
I took Saturday off from baking, for a morning of volunteering at a community Buy Nothing give-away event, then an afternoon gift-to-myself Christmas piano concert (solo, my spouse is a bah-humbug Christmas music avoider). The plan for today is 3 batches (15 dozen) oatmeal raisin cookies, but I need to replenish my raisin supply with (yet another) trip to the store. I only thought I was better organized this year.
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I don’t do a lot of holiday baking anymore - nothing like making 25-30 dozen cookies for family and coworkers that I used to do. But yesterday I made the obligatory Orange-Spiced Nuts for my coworkers, adding additional almonds and cashews because those are usually picked out. Will make another batch for a couple of friends I’m meeting this weekend and my sister and BIL later in the month.
I use the large canister from BJ’s Wholesale Club - makes about 2.5 batches of this recipe, give or take.
Orange-Spiced Nuts
1 12-oz. can mixed salted nuts
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp butter
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp dried grated orange peel
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (or more to taste)
In a large microwaveable mixing bowl, combine nuts, sugar, butter, and Worcestershire sauce. Cook on HIGH in microwave for 5-6 minutes until nuts are browned, stirring twice during cooking. Stir in orange peel and ground red pepper and mix well.
Spread on cookie sheet lined with foil to completely cool, stirring once or twice while cooling to break up nuts.
NOTES : I usually buy the extra large cans of Planters mixed nuts at BJ’s Wholesale Club – that makes about 2 1/2 batches of this recipe.
I also usually add more Worcestershire sauce, dried orange peel, and cayenne, depending on who I am making it for.
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The dried grated orange peel – is that purchased, or done at home? The pieces of peel should be pretty small, yes?
I was always taught that picking out specific things from something like that is bad form/uncivilized, and that you should just take a handful and be thankful for what you get.
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I don’t disagree. But it is what it is. I’m not going to stand there and police them as they spoon nuts into a Dixie cup. 
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Wow, you are CRANKING.
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Penzy’s!
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Yep - aiming to mail on Wednesday.
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Family favorite Oatmeal Raisin. 3 batches yielded the 15 dozen needed for family (each person gets their own dozen) plus 10 cookies for small trays gifting to friends. And about a dozen for “us”, mostly the slightly overdone on one edge and/or severely out of round.
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Very Lucky Peeps
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Your photo takes me to my mom’s kitchen in the 90s–we made holiday cookie plates and drove them to friends–thank you! 
I eat almost no sugar these days but if I got holiday cookies I’d eat them all!
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I pulled out the cookie recipe box today and chose a few I might make this year. The tree will be decorated with gingerbread people and candy canes this year. The recipes I pulled out were for:
•black eyed susans (from my youth-– shortbread thumbprints with chocolate ganache in the divot
•Plain old oatmeal cookies from my elementary school (they contain rice krispy cereal for crunch)
•Elementary school peanut butter cookies
•Pfeffernusse cookies– the kind like with a hard (ish) coating
• Shortbread snowflake in the special Nordic Ware pan. Maybe chocolate coating on the bottom
• the tried and true gingerbread cookie recipe I’ve made for decades
We’ll see if I can make even 1 batch. 
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I gave a friend some of the Tutu candied ginger cookies. He loves ginger but is trying to avoid sugar. He said he allowed himself to eat ½ a cookie per day!
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Me too. I used to make hundreds of cookies in about 15 different kinds. Teacher gifts, coworkers, friends, and parties.
Offspring now does the baking, as he loves doing it, and is now branching out to new recipes and things he has tweaked. (His apple cinnamon whisky balls are now legendary)
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Brown butter salted caramel snickerdoodles (rest dough overnight, 25 g per cookie, bake 9 minutes) https://www.twopeasandtheirpod.com/brown-butter-salted-caramel-snickerdoodles/
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I love the hardish coating on pfeffernusse cookies, the kind that coats the whole cookie. I’ve never been able to achieve the right balance of sugar and water–always too thick or too thin. I remember from childhood that those cookies would stay edible for months because of that sugar casing.
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(low moisture + high sugar are mostly what makes cookies like pfeffernusse so long-lasting.)
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I do have the baking bug just now, I wonder how long it will last.
Two to post today. Anise Drops from the King Arthur site did not go well! I know it’s a good recipe because I’ve used it in the past. Today yikes – the little puffs just stayed flat flat flat – they’re supposed to make a top and bottom, sort of like French macarons. Flavor’s fine but lousy texture.
The other is from an old yellowed recipe card – California Gold Bars. It baked up nicely, with a shattery top and chewy apricot, orange, and walnut interior.
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