Baking Bliss

In the past few days I've been on a mission. I've started my baking for Christmas. It's helping to keep my mind off my Dr's findings and off the fact that time seems to be creeping by to get the my mammogram appt. tomorrow and then I won't get results until the Monday after Christmas. Any way, it's helping but at the same time I think I've taken on a whole other form of stress...LOL! Cooking and baking are my passion, but when you have to do it in abundance you may just get to the point that you hate it. Not to that point YET! Can't say that I won't be by the time Christmas is here and over though. Any how, I always make one cookie platter to take to my Mom's side of the family's Christmas Eve celebration, but since all the other madness has come upon my life and I needed a distraction I offered to make not one, but three more cookie platters. I'm also trying out some sort of new recipes this year. I've made them before but I'm putting some twists on them. I'm trying to stick with just one theme of cookies and I've decided to make Hershey's kiss cookie/candy recipes. You can get some of those type of recipes here. I've also tried my hand at hard-tact candy, which turned out to be super easy. So, I went overboard with making it and bought 9 different flavors, and made two batches of each. Meaning I made 18 batches and now have about 10lbs of hard candy. I should of stopped there, but it was so fun and stress relieving breaking up all that candy with a rubber mallet... LOL! I just kept going with candy making from there though. I've made 5 dozen buckeyes and a pound of fudge. I'll start my cookie bake-off probably Tuesday, and I still have a strawberry brownie cheesecake to make, as well as no-bake cookies, a PB cream pie, and a pumpkin pie. If I don't end up gaining weight for Christmas it'll be a miracle. Can you tell I'm in charge of dessert at the 4 dinners/places we host/go to? That would be why I've made so much. I can't wait until the big day gets here. I'm looking forward to it and nibbling on all these goodies. In the meantime I'm being a good girl and not eating any of them. Promise!

PS: If you would like the recipe for anything I mentioned just leave me a comment and I'll get it to you. Happy Holidays!!