Happy Friday, cookie monsters!  It's the final day of my bake-a-thon, and I am beat (ha).

This last little cookie is a real show-stopper that I found online at bhg.com. They're called White-Chocolate Cherry Shortbreads, but they also have a slight amaretto quality to them due to a shot of almond extract. They're super-rich and taste a bit like cherry cheesecake. In short, my, my, they're outstanding.   I was looking for something really different in flavor and appearance from the other items going in my gift boxes, which are mostly shades of brown.  This hot little pink number really fit the bill, and they taste professional-bakery-fancy.

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It's day 4 of my cookie bake-a-thon...my glycemic index runneth over.

How long has it been since you opened a jar of molasses and took a big whiff?  Well, that's too long.  I find it very easy to forget what molasses smells like, even if it's only been a few days since I've smelled it.  I just had to go get the jar again and take a big pull so I could remind you: it smells like a blend of dark-roast coffee and soy sauce.  That doesn't sound like a good idea for cookies.  But molasses in ginger cookies?  It's necessary, in a big way.

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Welcome to my cookie bake-a-thon.

Aside from a few years in grad school, when mountains of papers that demanded grading trumped my heart's desire to bake cookies in the weeks before Christmas, I've been making cookie boxes for friends and neighbors for over a decade.  I love doing it.  The tradition started out simply enough, with just one kind of cookie, when I was new to the whole thing; over the years it's grown into a multi-batch affair, an assortment of 5 or 6 varieties of the very best recipes that I could find that weren't too daunting to make, but were still beautiful and a bit different.  Collecting these recipes has taken a lot of (admittedly enjoyable) research.  Every year I plan to make a little recipe booklet to include with the boxes so other people can make them too. That would be very Martha of me, wouldn't it?  But it never happens.  Thankfully, a few blog posts will do the trick.

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