Dipping buckeyes IN MY SLEEP

Yesterday I couldn't post anything because my hands were so cramped up from rolling cookies and dipping candies and making cookies into little tiny balls that I was rendered completely incapable of typing, unless I used my face. Which, by the time we'd been baking for seven hours, was an option.

What you're looking at here is two racks of Scotch shortbread dabbed with royal icing and then sprinkled with, well, sprinkles. Festive sprinkles, some shaped like snowflakes, some shaped like holly leaves and berries, some like little red balls, some like...ohhhh, never mind. And that foil-covered tray right next to them? Oh, well, THOSE would be the last of the ten thousand buckeyes we had to roll and dip and roll and dip and roll and dip and roll and.....excuse me. It was intense, and if I could be so exhausted by a day of Christmas cookie-baking, then Santa's elves really must be magical because they build toys, what? All year?

As it turns out, I am neither elfin or magical, so what everybody got from me is a great big bundle of grouchy headache by the end of the day. The only one who was still chipper was my mother, and even she was starting to crack around the edges.

Here's our list:

1. Dorie Greenspan's peanut butter/oatmeal/chocolate chip cookies, made with red and green M&Ms instead of chocolate chips. These were my husband's special request.

2. Scotch shortbread, festively decorated, as mentioned above (please pass the tequila.)

3. Buckeyes, which will be featuring in my nightmares probably until next Christmas

4. White chocolate almond bark with red and green M&Ms

5. Peppermint bark made with layered milk chocolate/white chocolate candy with crushed candy canes on top.

6. Pretzel candy made with broken pretzel sticks drizzled in melted milk chocolate and placed in the cutest little paper frill candy cups. These were, like, a million times easier than dipping an entire huge bag of tiny pretzel twists, which is what we did one year until we very nearly committed acts of violence upon one another

7. Lemon cookies, which were very easy and so good

8. Peanut butter cup thingies, those ones where you bake a peanut butter cookie in a mini muffin tin and then push a mini Reese's peanut butter cup down into it while the cookie is still warm from the oven

As I look at our list, I think we might have run a bit heavy on the peanut buttery side of things. Also if the stickiness of the kitchen floor underfoot was any indication. We have to go back tomorrow for a pick up, which means a trip to the Dollar Tree today so that we can buy some tins. And, oh yes! A platter for my husband's Christmas do at work tomorrow -- he's taking many of those peanut butter/oatmeal cookies and an assortment of others.

It was a fun day and the four of us -- Meelyn, Aisling, Nanny and I -- had a good time bonding over the peanut butter jars. Very jolly all around. Well, at least up until the last two hours.