Holiday Cookies (3/8) -- Raspberry and Mini Chocolate Chip Rugelach

I have always enjoyed chocolate chip Rugelach bought from the supermarket so I thought it would be a fun adventure to make. They turned out to be easier then I thought and I will definitely be making them again. I must warn you that these are a bit time consuming cookie because you have to let the dough rest for at least 2 hours plus you have to refrigerate the rolled cookies for 30 min before baking. I made the dough on Saturday and then rolled the cookies on Sunday and refrigerated them while I made frosting for some other cookies and the oven was heating up.

Holiday Cookies (2/8) -- Meringue Sandwich Cookies

     When I found this recipe I had super high hopes that I could create the tree in the picture on the site. I hurried over to William Sonoma and bought a pastry bag so I could pipe the dough to all be the same size. I also got this idea that it would be neat if the cookies were green with green frosting in the middle. I read online that when you put food coloring in the meringue dough it bakes out so you can't tell its colored. To make these the green color I was after I chopped quite a few fresh green mint leaves in the food processor thinking that they would add green specks to my cookies. Turns out that when you bake mint leaves they turn brown and they don't stay on the surface. So after baking the 150 or so cookies, and making the 70-75 or so sandwiches I got lazy and didn't end up making the tree, so it didn't matter that they weren't green anyway. All of the lucky people who received these as part of their holiday plates seemed to like them so I figure it was a success of sorts.

Holiday Cookies (1/8) -- Dog Biscuits with Soy Milk

     My husband and I are and have always been dog lovers. We have 6 dogs in our life. 2 on my husband's side that are Shiloh an English Setter and Taffy a Cocker Spaniel. I am lucky to be part of a 4 dog family, Suze a black lab and Apollo a giant yellowish red lab that live with my parents, Mandy a yellow lab lives with my Aunt and then there is Molly a Rhodesian Ridgeback that lives with my grandparents.  We decided that these wonderful dogs deserved some holiday treats and these biscuits would be a wonderful start to our holiday cookie baking. After they were completely cooled we shipped a fair amount off to Nebraska and are planning on taking the rest to the family Christmas at my parents for the other pups.
     To create this recipe I did a google search for a peanut butter dog treat recipe and ended up picking this recipe because my husband drinks soy milk and I thought it would be fun to make the treats using soy milk. So in the end here is my version of Dog Biscuits with Soy Milk. I have modified the ingredients and instructions to include what I actually used and to walk you through my process. If you have a dog biscuit shaped cookie cutter that would be great but for this recipe I just used holiday shapes. Gary's dogs in Nebraska didn't seem to mind that they weren't normal bone shaped.