My Holiday Cookie Challenge (Progress)

I spent a good part of Sunday afternoon in the kitchen baking. I made 3 different kinds of cookies. Once I get started, I just don't want to stop!

First, when flipping through the flyers this weekend, trying to figure out what we needed at the grocery store, I saw persimmons on sale everywhere. I've never had or bought persimmons before (I'm not even sure you can get them back home...), so I had to find out how you eat them. Apparently, they make delicious cookies - so how could I not try them out? Of course I didn't think to pull out my camera before I had the dough made, but I did snap a picture of the pretty orange pulp:

I used this recipe. I know, I know. It isn't a recipe from the Canadian Living cookie magazine I challenged myself to bake through... but how could I not try something new? I'm a sucker for trying new fruit & vegetables in particular.

The dough was silky smooth & the cookies turned out to be moist & flavourful (very similar to pumpkin cookies). I had no problems baking them... though the finished product has a greenish cast that is absent in the raw dough:

A friend told me this is normal, but I wonder why... I did find some recipes that mixed the baking soda into the persimmon pulp first (I didn't do this) - maybe that has something to do with it?

Next I made these Toblerone cookies:

Why yes, the first 2 ingredients are a very large chocolate bar & a pound of butter. For 15 cookies... These are BIG!

Just smush the Toblerone triangle into the round & wrap the dough up the edges:

These also turned out perfectly (with the oven 25F lower than called for):

Decadent - one cookies is definitely more than enough!

Finally, I made some ginger shortbreads.

This recipe called for "crystallized ginger." I found "sliced ginger" that was covered in sugar. I'm assuming they're the same...? But that combined with freshly grated gingerroot really gives these cookies a nice, bold flavour.

I loved how these baked up: one batch in a cake pan. With the parchment paper, they lifted right out. And scoring the square before makes cutting the fingers super easy:

My pan was smaller than the 9" recommended, so they're a bit thick. But that makes them moister than a typical shortbread. YUM!

A very successful baking session if you ask me! Stay tuned for more holiday baking!