Warming Up the Kitchen

Ingrid's Jam Prints

It's that time of year again! I'm warming up the kitchen baking up some trial batches of new cookies for the Cookie Kitchen! This is our third year in business and we've made a lot of improvements.

Here's a picture of one of our new additions this year. This recipe came from our friend, Ingrid, who makes the cutest little cookies every year for our families. When we asked her permission to borrow her recipe for the Cookie Kitchen, she kept saying how honored she would be if we would use her recipe. And here we were feeling all honored that she was excited to let us have it! Ingrid usually rolls hers in crushed walnuts, but because we already have a cookie that is rolled in nuts, we decided to keep these plain. Wow! Are they melt-in-your-mouth delicious! These are Stephen's favorites and he just goes crazy when he sees me trying another batch.

I asked Ingrid what type of jam she used in her cookies and she suggested apricot, sour cherry or rosehip jam. I hadn't thought of rosehip jam for ages! Well, since my sisters and I worked for Angela, anyway. That would have been about 25 years ago. The story of Angela is too long to get into just now, but let's just say that Angela, who was in her 80's and 90's when we worked for her after school, introduced us to many new things. One of those things was rosehip jam. If you've never tried it before, I highly suggest you go to some specialty foods store (or you might have them in your mega grocery stores in the US) and buy a little jar of it. You will be hooked! It's got a smooth, tarty-sweetness and I just can't get enough of it. Mmmmmm!

We're also adding some gluten-free cookies this year. These are not for those who suffer from Celiac disease, but for those people who have a gluten intolerance. Our kitchens are not gluten-free, so we cannot claim that our cookies are either. We have had many requests for gluten-free cookies that actually taste good, and we have found some! I've let some of my gluten-free friends taste test some of our experiments and they have been given rave reviews so we're excited to add these cookies to our list this year as well.

Pray that this year's endeavors will be better than last year for us. Unfortunately, last year the enconomy tanked just as the season started and no one wanted to buy cookies. We did ok, but definitely not as well as we had hoped. We need our "cookie money" to help us get through some rough times here and we're praying that this year people will be willing to splurge again on homemade Christmas cookies. We love baking these and using our creativity this way, and even if no one buys them, our families are thrilled with the abundance of cookies at this time of year!

Here's to another year of The Cookie Kitchen!