Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Southern Lights and Christmas Cookies


Every year at Christmastime, we pile in the car and head for the Kentucky Horse Park. The Kentucky Horse Park is a beautiful 1224 acre park dedicated to horses. The park is gorgeous with it's white fences, tall swaying bluegrass, and over 100 horses of various colors and sizes. Inside the park are riding stables, museums, playgrounds, stadiums, and a campground.

We enjoy the horse park all year round for it's pony rides, but we enjoy the park best of all when it hosts the Southern Lights festival for Christmas. At Christmas, the huge park is turned into a true winter wonderland decked out in every imaginable Christmas light. Once you drive though the display of lights, you can go inside the park for for pony rides, a visit with Santa, train rides, a petting zoo, craft booths, hot chocolate, funnel cakes, kettle corn and all kinds of other goodies. I always feel thankful that we have such a festival of lights to attend each Christmas.





Of course, it's always nice to come home to some home baked cookies! I'm way behind on my cookie baking this year and wanted to submit these three cookies to finish off my Twelve Weeks of Christmas Cookies.
One of my personal favorites were these lemon sandwich cookies, found on Martha Stewart's website here. A lemony cookie dough sandwiched with a lemony cream cheese filling. A wonderful light and mildly flavored lemon cookie that is just the right size to pop in your mouth! If you prefer a stronger flavored lemon cookie, just add a little more lemon zest to the dough and the filling.

Megan from My Baking Adventures sent me some delicious sugar crusted chocolate sables for our Twelve Weeks of Christmas Cookies cookie swap. They were so chocolaty and delicious that I had to try and recreate them in my kitchen. I had a hard time getting the dough to come together and might have rolled them in a little too much sugar, but there were still delicious (just not as good as Megan's). They are a lot like a chocolate shortbread, but with an extra little bonus of sugar around the edge. You can find the recipe by clicking on Megan's link above.
The third cookie is a traditional cookie that my mom, my daughter and I make every year, the peanut butter blossom! This year I tried a new recipe on the Hershey website, found here. This is by far the best recipe I've tried so far. They turned out perfectly browned and crisp on the bottom, while chewy all the way through. I may just have to make another batch before Christmas arrives!!

What are your favorite holiday traditions?

18 comments:

  1. What a lovely cookie selection! Yummy! I really want the ones with the hershey's kisses. I've been seeing them a lot and now the craving has finally set in.
    HOpe you and your family have a wonderful holiday.
    Lots of love, HH

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  2. All three of your cookies look great, especially the lemon sandwiches! Don't you just love Christmas light festivals? Our zoo puts on the "Safari of Lights" every year, and I love going!

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  3. Singing Christmas songs on Christmas eve.
    The park sounds so neat, and your cookies look delicious :)

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  4. Fantastic looking cookies, the lights aren't bad neither! I hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas!

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  5. They all look delicious! I'm going to have to try those lemon cookies! Merry Christmas!

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  6. Those look great! I particularly like the hershey kiss ones.

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  7. You are indeed lucky to have such a wonderful Christmasy place to visit. All your cookies have looked wonderful, but my personal vote would be for the lemon sandwich cookies. Double dose of lemon--yum! Merry Christmas, Kim.

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  8. I loved reading about your Christmas traditions. My favorites are baking with my son--cookies for Santa and Christmas tree bread for breakfast Christmas morning.

    Merry Christmas!

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  9. Merry Christmas, Kim!!!!!Beautiful cookies as usual :)

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  10. Merry Christmas! I love your Christmas cookies collection. I made something similar to your lemon sandwich cookies the other day and they were so yummy. Have a great Christmas with your fam.

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  11. The southern lights sound like so much fun! I have been craving some fair food lately...

    I love these cookies, especially those lemon sandwich ones! I always loved the kind that you could buy in the stores but everyone knows homemade is always better! And you can never go wrong with chocolate sables OR peanut blossoms.

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  12. Kim, That sounds like a great park to live near. What fun!

    Our past holiday traditions used to be riding around looking at Christmas lights, a bottle of champagne and those cheap ass plastic wine glasses, sipping and driving and looking. We don’t do that anymore :-) Now we spend Christmas eve at home with a good meal, a few treats and appetizers…listening to music or watching an old Christmas movie.

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  13. Loving those lemon sandwich cookies and the PB blossoms always show up on cookie plates in my family.

    Have a truly wonderful holiday Kim! Merry Christmas to you and your family!

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  14. Yum! They all look so delicious! I have to get baking today... I am a slacker this holiday!
    Have a wonderful holiday, Kim.
    xoox

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  15. Delicious! Baking is one of my favorite traditions and the kids are finally picking up on it. Merry Christmas!

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  16. What a beautiful time it sounds like you had :-)

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  17. All those cookies look tasty! It was fun baking with you on our 12 weeks of Christmas. Hope you had a very merry Christmas!

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