Chocolate chip cookie – Xapa to the World

My family loves to bake. We traditionally have had a family-wide baking day soon after Thanksgiving to make goodies for friends and others. Without getting into the dietary spiel, there’s something about putting a sweet, warm cookie in your mouth that makes you feel good. C’mon, you know exactly what I’m talking about. We go all out too.

This year, my sisters and their kids were unable to join us, and with my work schedule and tutoring, I wasn’t much help either. Mom, however, started early, working on the chocolates and such. The chocolate Mom gets is so yummy and doesn’t have any of the wax fillers that is common in most store-bought chocolates. We do everything from chocolate molds to chocolate covered pretzels to turtles to buckeyes to chocolate mice. Yes, these:

They are a blast to make and always make an impression. I was telling the girls at work that we usually hear one of two things:

Oh, these are way too cute to eat!

and

I want two! One to eat and one to show [insert name].

The buckeyes are my babies. I love making them. I found the recipe on AllRecipes.com and they are delectable. You can find them, too, here.

And then we get into the cookies. Mom really goes all out with the cookies. She made several kinds of bar cookies this year and they were yummy. I’m really only good for our standard World-Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies. Yes, they are world-famous because I made them in Japan and shared them with the international students at Shidai, the city university. The word has gone out to the world that these chocolate chip cookies are the best. I can say that and it’s not bragging because everyone else will agree with me. No joke. Just ask them. If they don’t, then they haven’t had them. 😀 (I may or may not be kidding. Ha!)

One of my favorite parts is the delivery. We were able to deliver a couple of boxes of goodies to friends and neighbors Saturday night. We even got some yummy, supa-hot, salsa in exchange.

On a funny note, my mom and I love to sing. My whole family does, but when we deliver goodies to people’s’ homes, we especially like to sing. We chose We Wish You a Merry Christmas this year.

This reminds me of a great story from when I was in junior high. We drove over to my friend Rebecca’s house to deliver some Christmas goodies. It had been snowing and so all the houses were blanketed in a lovely white fluff and mom and I were bundled up in our coats with hoods. We went up to the door, knocked, and started singing our song. It took a while for them to get to the door and open it, but once they did, we saw a man blocking his wife and kids with his arm looking out at us like we were serial killers. We quickly realized our mistake and tried to gracefully bow out and head next door, but we have this problem where our gut reaction is to start laughing. So, here we are giggling and trying to make good with this freaked out man and family. They wouldn’t even take any treats as an apology. It was really quite funny. We walked over to the next house and began the routine all over again, pleased to find that it was indeed Rebecca’s house. We all had a great laugh that night.

What are your favorite treats to make at Christmas? Have anything that you cannot wait to bake, or something that you love to get from a friend or relative?

—————————–

I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!