our epic cookie bake-a-thon

If you follow along on Twitter or Facebook, you know that this past weekend was one for the history books. Why? We made 40 dozen cookies. Over 450 cookies.

Sister & I packed up our cookie tins and some baking supplies and drove over to Mom's house in the Berkshires mid-morning on Sunday. We got back home past dinner time. In between? We baked. We baked chocolate mint cookies, molasses cookies, butter cookies, peanut butter kiss cookies, chocolate fruit cake cookies and cowboy cookies. We made a mess. We cleaned it up. We made more messes.

We were a well-oiled machine. Except for, of course, the occasional baking FAIL. Worry not, though: this buttercream frosting was saved and turned out to be absolutely decadent.

We mixed, stirred, whisked, shaped, decorated, baked and cooled all day long, stopping only to... well, stopping to eat, drink, giggle, stretch & generally goof off.

We had to set up a separate cooling and packaging area on a folding table set up in the living room. The cookies began piling up and by the end of it, we were overrun with holiday treats. Which is exactly what I had hoped would happen.

This bake-a-thon will go down in the history books. Even though the northeast is sloshing around in rainy, un-Christmasy weather, this was the perfect way to launch an all-out assault of holiday cheer. Thank you to my lifelong baking partners for yet another set of memories I'll forever keep with me. Also, thank you for ensuring that I'll gain enough weight to survive an upcoming harsh winter. That's so important in today's world, and I'll have 40 dozen cookies to thank for it.

A big shout-out to ShopRite for letting me try out some of their private label baking ingredients! From flour to sugars to spices, we were stoked to test out quality ingredients for our epic, history-making, all-day holiday cookie bake-a-thon.