I've heard about this for years but I've never been able to go because they always did it during the week and I had daycare kids. Well since I'm not doing that anymore and this year they did the baking for 2 days I could come.
I have to say, even though I've heard so many stories about this day I wasn't prepared for what I encountered!
My mother in law, her sister (Aunt LilaRae) and all of my sisters in laws- Teresa- who lives in Connecticut but flies in for this day, Daena and Ruth all come over for this adventure.
When I got there Saturday morning at 9:00 they were already starting. My mother in law has a huge kitchen with a 10 foot table covered in parchment paper and they had stations set up to keep it organized.
Here is Teresa:
Daena:
Ruth:
My mother in law:
Aunt LilaRae:
Here's another station- cookies ready to go into her double oven. Thank goodness for a double oven or we'd still be baking!
Here's another cooling station- in a totally different room!
We had to keep our eyes on Aunt LilaRae- there was a lot of snitching going on:
Here are some more cookies- these are called Ruth Woods Cookies- they are a very flat cookie flattened by a cup dipped in sugar, then washed in eggwash and either a sugar/crushed nut sprinkle or sugar sprinkle on top:
My mother in law and Aunt LilaRae rolling out the Almond Bites- they taste just like almond banket:
Here we all are:
More cookies cooling:
Here are all my cookies boxed up and ready to go home to my freezer:
I'm going to try to remember most of the cookies/treats that we made:
vamino bars, wreath cookies, ruth woods cookies, snowball cookies, paper thin chocolate chip cookies, butter cookies rolled in sugar, Blitzes, pecan tassies, peanut butter blossoms with hershey's kiss, almond bites, blarney stones, decorated christmas cookies. I think there might be more but I can't think of what they were.
In the 2 days we made- are you ready for this?????
3,700 cookies!! Isn't that crazy! I didn't take some of them that had nuts but I still ended up with about 45 dozen cookies. Needless to say my freezer is full for awhile. Mark's work is going to love me, because a nice tray is going in with him tomorrow.
I really wasn't too excited about going to this, but I have to admit I was wrong. We had so much fun and I'm looking forward to next year and it might take that long before I need cookies again!
