Michelle Miles: Christmas Goodies

I love to bake, especially around Christmas. I like making special treats and then packaging them up and giving them away (much to the dismay of my husband – who loves the treats as much as I do. But hey, if I didn’t give them away, we’d be 300 pounds!). Anyway…this year I decided I was going to be proactive and start baking ahead of time. That way I wouldn’t kill myself the week before Christmas trying to get it all done.

I’d been reading up on how to freeze cookie dough and baked cookies. I had no idea it could be done. But I discovered that most cookie dough can be frozen for up to 3 months before baking. Cookie dough that freezes well: chocolate chip, sugar, peanut butter. I also have this recipe for chocolate crackle cookies. You have to refrigerate the dough for a certain amount of time before baking. I ran out of time that day and ended up freezing the dough. I made the cookies the following weekend then froze the cookies in Ziploc containers. You put wax paper between each layer and it’s wonderful and beautiful.