Cookies, cookies, cookies

What makes a house a home?  Cooking of course!  Nothing beats the smells coming out of an oven, be it savoury or sweet, to transform an otherwise bland day at the professional world.  How many of our childhood memories are linked to cooking, how many times have we not been soothed by the comfort that whatever the difficulty, however mean our day was, there would certainly be food to make the world alright again... 

At least, that's how I feel about cooking - it makes every wrong right again.  OK, enough about the theory, let's go into practice:  'tis the season for cookie-baking and for the first time I've managed to bake THREE different types of cookies.  I'm excited about each of them because they may start a trend in my cooking and I may wind up inventing more recipes...

cheese cookies

The first batch was a cheese cookie, adapted from a TV cookery show in the Flemish TV.  Here I substituted gouda with manchego and regular flour with gluten-free one.  It has been some time that I look into that particular type of cooking (gluten-free), not be cause of an ailment, but because I, too, find that gluten-free flour is much more digestable.  Instead of the onion salsa (I'm not keen on onions), I made a simple dip with yoghurt and herbs.  Cookies turned out perfect (next time, though, I'll put a whole egg just to bind the dough better) and I'm afraid there is not one left...

apricot-pumpkin seed cookies

The two other batches were baked for a cookie-swap party (thanks to J for organising this). I played with the idea to make another savoury batch, but, being Christmasy, I surrendered to popular demand and baked sweet cookies (...)

Again, there were adaptations:  the first was an adaptation of Martha Stewart's recipe.  Whereas I thought I had pistachios, I didn't, so I simply used pumpkin seeds instead (green as well...).  And, obviously, I made them round and not triangles (I can be lazy sometimes...). 

peanut butter cookies

The second proved to be quite popular:  crunchy peanut butter cookies, adapted from the blog of the Brown-eyed Baker. Of course, this being the first time  I made the cookies, they turned slightly bigger than expected, perfect for little (or bigger) children...

Initial reactions at the party were positive to these batches, so World, be aware - there will be more cookie baking to come!

Enjoy the Holidays!