Skip The Mall. Make Cookies.

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Winter was made for procrastibaking. Cold temperatures, treacherous sidewalks, cranky mall employees and belligerent holiday shoppers are all great reasons to just stay inside and bake. Who needs the stress when you can order all your presents from ThinkGeek, sipping tea in your pajamas while sitting in front of your laptop?

As soon as you’ve completed the arduous task of filling your online shopping cart with gifts, you can wander off to the kitchen with a smug sense of accomplishment and turn your attention to more important things. Like a batch of Holiday Cream Wafers.

Flaky little cookie rounds, dusted with sugar and then sandwiched together with an ultra-buttery buttercream frosting, you need these cookies in your life. They’re not quick to make, with all of the rolling and cutting, baking and filling, so they’re perfect for a day when the snow is falling and you’re looking for an excuse to stay home.

For best results, these cookies should be made while the snow piles up outside and classic Christmas movies are playing in the background. My December baking sessions usually include at least one round of We’re No Angels, the 1955 classic starring Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, and Peter Ustinov; closely followed by the incomparable Tracy and Hepburn in Desk Set. And of course, Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye make White Christmas an absolute necessity.

Cream wafers are also a great project to make with little ones, if you have that kind of patience and make peace with the fact that every surface in your kitchen will be strewn with sugar by the time you’re done. I like them a lot more than the rock hard sugar cookies with royal icing, the standard kitchen project for children at this time of year. Since the frosting is inside, cream wafers don’t present as many opportunities for decorating as plain sugar cookies, but they taste so much better! They also freeze beautifully, and they’re edible straight out of the freezer.

Which is perfect, because the freezer is a great place to hide your stash. Just in case you weren’t planning to share.  

Photo Credit: Jen Delorme

Photo Credit: Jen Delorme

Jeanette Jones

Jeanette lives, writes, and bakes in a quiet little corner of Sandy Hill, Ottawa. Known for the generous distribution of baked goods and the keen precision of her editor’s marks, Jeanette swears by the Oxford English Dictionary and favours semi-sweet chocolate in her brownies.

SITES I LOVE: 

Chocolate Covered Katie | Smitten Kitchen | Cardamom and Cloves