On my phone, only the first picture showed, and with the big and little carrots (which looked real!) in view, I thought “Shouldn’t this be on the 2023 Funnies thread?”
Then I scrolled down. 
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Impressive!
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Stunning!
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I’d like to reach through the screen and sample one of each. Beautiful cookie tray assortment and arrangement, @mig !
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The Christmas baking is finally finished! From the top: Honigkuchen, Linzer cookies, Gingerbread stars, Nussecken, and Vanillekipferl. Merry Christmas! Happy Christmas! Frohe Weihnachten! Wishes of joy and peace to all!
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I love this. Are you of German or Austrian extraction?
Thanks! And the answer to the question is: both.
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In spite of many difficulties that come with hand-kneading pandoro, this was overall a success. Next year I will not talk myself out of laminating because temperatures were comfortable enough for it and laminating makes more sense when kneading by hand. The kneading goes great for the first two doughs, but once the emulsion goes in it’s so difficult in a way that no other rich dough I’ve made by hand has been. The temperature of the dough just gets too high. Lamination would allow me to handle the dough far less.
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I would love advice: are these overproofed? They were a bit crumbly with uneven holes, although the flavor was decent. They never got particularly puffy even though I gave them extra time on the rise. I also realized I failed to deflate them much after the first ferment, although by the time they were shaped into rolls they were relatively deflated. Mostly a fail.
Recipe: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/japanese-milk-bread-rolls-recipe
I used weights.
@biondanonima had much more success with the recipe.
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The surface appearance, crumbly texture and the fact that you didn’t get a good rise after shaping makes me think they were under-kneaded (all of those can be due to insufficient gluten formation). Did you reach windowpane stage when you kneaded before your bulk ferment? It takes quite a while with enriched doughs (and even longer than I expected for this one). I know you said the dough was still sticky after kneading, another sign of under kneading.
Bummer that they didn’t work out for you texture-wise but at least the flavor was good!
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I used this recipe and method for my Thanksgiving rolls, turned out great… although I think I should have cooked mine another minute or two to “brown them up” a bit more.
This was my version, again they could have been a bit darker.
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OK - maybe that was it. Thanks! Didn’t check for windowpane. It was still a bit sticky. Did you add any additional flour?
What’s windowpane ?
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Christmas cookie #5: smitten kitchen’s “unfussy sugar cookies.”
I never make sugar cookies but was charmed by the look of these. I bought a fluted rolling cutter and the specific decors, so I forged ahead with half a batch. I’m so unskilled at decorating that I struggled to live up to the “unfussy” part of these but they came out alright.
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Something about how much you can stretch a sample of the dough. I’m too lazy to look it up 
They look really good!
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You pull a piece out and if the stretched part can become translucent without tearing… you’re good to go.
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They look under-kneaded to me too. For a bit of reference, not too long ago someone wondered about this recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction saying the rolls were kind of dense and I looked at the blog entry and Sally’s rolls look under-kneaded too. So the poster got typical results based on the recipe. The rolls look dense in her photos.
Compare how Sally’s rolls look vs these. The recipes are actually very similar overall, but Aimee’s rolls have much better developed gluten and the difference is very noticeable:
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