No doubt it has been a hectic end of year, what with the standard end of year activities plus the finish on the coif project, and the lightning trip to the UK to view the final exhibit. But that doesn’t mean that other things have languished. 

First, because the holiday can’t happen without cookies, even if I am not around to make them all, I present our 2023 cookie plate. Some slimmed down to lower carb versions (with varying levels of success), and some expertly baked by Younger Spawn, whose oven-acumen now far exceeds my own. Luckily Spawn’s job is work-from-anywhere remote and allowed early arrival the week before Christmas. While we were in Sheffield we had a happy house-sitter, tree waterer, and master baker in residence. And said HHS/TW/MBIR had run of the place, its kitchen, library, and media without clumsy parents cluttering available time and space. A win all the way around.

Starting from around 11:00 and spiraling into the center we have:

1. Brown butter chocolate chunk cookies. A specialty of Younger Offspring, with grated chocolate bits, chunks and dust instead of commercial chips. To die for.
2. Low carb peanut butter cookies. After all sorts of failures trying customized Keto recipes I fell back on the old reliable Joy of Cooking one, but subbed in King Arthur Keto flour and monkfruit-based sweeteners. I have always used Teddy no-sugar peanut butter, too. A slightly stickier dough than usual because the KA Keto flour and it isn’t as absorbent as regular all purpose flour. A bit more oil release on the baking pan, but this time the cookies turned out pretty close to usual – not dry and crumbly, although I couldn’t get the cookie stamp I usually use to work well and fell back to the traditional fork-tine checkerboard. They were pronounced acceptable by my core audience.
3. Earthquakes (our name for chocolate crinkles). Full octane. These were made by Younger Offspring, and are especially luscious this year because the batter became the receiving point for ganache left over from another recipe. Not to many fault lines in them this year, but oh so good.
4. Mexican Wedding Cakes. Another old family favorite done perfectly by Younger Offspring. Lots of pecans in a buttery shortbread base. 
5. Lower carb Buffalo Bourbon Balls. This is a family recipe that usually starts with a box of Nilla wafers or other similar vanilla or chocolate flavor plain commercial cookies buzzed to fine crumbs. But commercial low carb cookies are hard to find and maddeningly expensive. So I improvised my own, making large blobby plain cocoa cookies using the Keto flour and fake sugar, plus butter and Dutch process cocoa. Then the next day I ground them up and made the usual, but rolled them in a mix of the cocoa and granulated fake sugar instead of the confectioner’s version of the same monkfruit sweetener. (I wanted to save the powdered stuff for other baking because it works better for most of it than the standard). I used agave syrup in place of corn syrup for these. Plus bourbon this year instead of rum, mostly because that was what we had on hand. These actually turned out to be the best lower-carb cookie I’ve made so far. I will have to do it again so I can write up the recipe because it’s worth sharing and replicating in the future.
6. Jam thumbprints. Another winner from Younger Offspring, who has sneaky ways of setting the raspberry jam in the shortbread base so that it is a neat, non messy, intensely fruity bite. 
7. Slimmed down Oysters. A take on my own invention, using my usual recipe but subbing in the King Arthur Keto flour and monkfruit sweetener into the standard along with the usual avalanche of ground hazelnuts. Those were hard to come by this year, but luckily I had some in the freezer, left over from last year. I was very happy at how the batter worked with the cookie press. And these were a collaborative effort. I did the cookies, but Spawn did the ganache and filled the sandwiches. The ganache is full octane. 
8. Lemon macarons with lemon curd. All Younger Span, all the way. These are classic, intensely lemony, and lighter than air. An accomplishment far beyond me. Again, to die for.
9. Lower carb triple gingers. Obviously the white chocolate chips in the cookies are not slimmed and there is minced candied ginger in there, but the rest of the cookie is my usual recipe, subbing in the low carb flour and sugars. I’m a bit disappointed in these because as a drop cookie they are supposed to spread. These didn’t, remaining the rocky shapes in which they were spooned onto the baking sheet.
10. Lower carb chocolate chip with cocoa nibs. This is new this year. I started with a keto shortbread cookie recipe, and added keto chocolate chips, plus no-sugar cocoa nibs (left over from last year). The result is pleasing but also a bit disappointing. The texture and taste of the cookie part is too much like a store-bought Chips Ahoy. I had hoped for something more like a home-baked Tollhouse. But they are not too sweet (a common problem with keto baking because the fake sugars are more intense than their standard counterpart). Good enough, but not great.
11. Unseen – a keto lemon cheesecake in place of our standard Panforte, which could not by any means known to man or woman, be slimmed down. In fact, if I went on a forced march through Middle Earth and could pick only one food substance to sustain me, the Panforte, packed with nuts, dried fruit, and carbs would be a space/weight efficient substitute for Lembas.

Obviously for cookies to happen we also had to hit Max Festivity. Again Younger Spawn leapt in and took over the orchestration of the tree, and deployment of the M&M Man Army:

And to round it out, presents were exchanged. I was well prepared with gift socks, mostly knit since I mailed the coif. This photo omits the two last pairs, along with a nifty folding basket that was a present last year, and has been adopted as my knitting bowl for sock production.

Not to brag, but I am delighted that my family knows me so well. Among the puzzles, wearables, and adornments they gave me this year, were stitching things: a quarter yard of 40 count cream linen, a sweet little tabletop caddy box for needles and pins (I will use it for needles and orts), a small cigarette box that is a perfect traveling needle and thread safe, and a chatelaine. 

As you can see I’ve already put my favorite laying tool, fine needle threader, and scissors on the chatelaine. I put a slice of beeswax in that little snap purse. 

The rose header for it has a sturdy pin on the back. But since I am usually found in T-shirts these days, the weight of the thing might be problematic. This gave me an excellent reason to go stash diving and retrieve a length of evenweave stitching ribbon that I bought at Sajou in Paris when we visited there about seven years ago. A quick trip to the computer to doodle up a new pattern for it, and I’m off and running. It will be an award-ribbon style around the neck piece, with a 90 degree angle in front where the ends overlap. The chatelaine will be pinned to that triple layer of sturdy linen, and the loop will go around my neck. Problem solved. Or it will be as soon as I’m done with the stitching and assembly.