Cookies for Santa

We're finishing up all of our final preparations before the "Big Man" comes tomorrow night. The presents have been bought and wrapped. The house has been cleaned. The Christmas dinner has been planned and the groceries have been purchased. And, most importantly, in anticipation of Jolly Ol' St. Nick, the kids have been GOOD!!!

Last evening, after getting a haircut and having 2 glorious hours to sit in Caffe Classico sipping my soy mocha cappuccino and reading the LEO and Velocity while Mairin had yoga camp, we came home to bake cookies for Santa. We always bake chocolate chip cookies for Santa, so that was a no brainer. This year, Mairin's been begging for gingerbread men as well, so we tackled that too.

For the chocolate chip cookies, we always make the Toll House recipe, but this year we changed it up a little. Instead of Toll House, which are produced on equipment that also processes peanuts, we opted for Sunspire Organic Semi Sweet chocolate chips. We used their recipe, which is nearly identical to Toll House. Instead of all purpose flour we used white whole wheat flour, which can be substituted 1:1 for all purpose baking flour. And, I didn't have any vanilla bean, so we omitted that and just used the extract. These cookies definitely taste more buttery than the Toll House version, and honestly, I think that makes them delicious!! This recipe made 3 1/2 dozen, so we have plenty for the rest of the holiday season!!

For the gingerbread men we used Heidi's recipe at 101cookbooks.com. These were very easy to make, and relatively healthy too. They rolled out nicely and were easy to cut, not sticky at all like I've heard about other gingerbread recipes (I've sadly, never made these cute little cookies before). This recipe also made 3 1/2 dozen cookies. Our 42 gingerbread men are patiently waiting naked in the freezer to be iced and decorated on Christmas Eve.

Since Mairin's been begging since November for the gingerbread men, she had decided that we would give Santa the chocolate chip cookies and she would keep and eat all of the gingerbread men. We of course, taste tested each set of cookies at Mairin's insistence......."we have to make sure they are yummy for Santa, he doesn't like gross things you know". Well, Mairin decided after the taste test that she's not really a big fan of gingerbread cookies, but that Santa will surely love them better than the chocolate chips. So Santa, get ready for some gingerbread and milk with you get to our house!!