It's a plan - for cookie baking

And of course, like most plans, it has already, in the words of the poet, Robert Burns:

Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Or at least, morphed a good bit since I drafted this post yesterday with the intention to fill it in last night.

The plan was to start baking cookies on Saturday, beginning with the honey and spice and nut types, that are supposed to age for awhile before you eat them, like lebkuchen, and the Swiss almond-filled spice, Biberli. Proceed to ones that can be frozen, like the peanut butter swirl bars, and tonight, the jam cookies. And to accommodate the Thanksgiving holiday, when I usually make a pumpkin mousse, and serve it with thin spice cookies in the shape of turkeys, make the Moravian ginger thins Tuesday, some in turkey shapes, and the rest the stars I usually make.

Everything went pretty well, except the almond spice have turned out to be this year's do-over (last year it was the lebkuchen and the peanut butter swirl bars). I had the almond filling first too dry and crumbly, and then too soft and squishy, and it squished out while they were baking. The do-over's now on Wednesday's to-do list, and lemon bars to use up the extra, zested lemons have been added to the list of desserts for the Thanksgiving feast - they're one of Al's faves, anyhow.

The Savoring the Seasons lebkuchen turned out fine; they are never a terribly prepossessing-looking cookie, but they taste great:

The "factory seconds" Biberli had to come to work, where they should get eaten without too much trouble.