Sugar Attack

I think I now remember why I haven't put the flannel sheets on the bed in years. They're so very comfortable and warm that on a cool morning, they make it nearly impossible to get out of bed. While I normally think that live-in household help would be intrusive, on a morning like this, it would be lovely to ring for the maid and say, "Jennings, bring me my tea and a scone and the newspaper," and never have to leave the bed. As it was, I lounged around for far too long until I needed that tea and then felt guilty about throwing my schedule off for the day, until I reminded myself that I have no schedule for the day. I have things to do, but nothing that absolutely had to be done this morning.

I might even be really decadent and take the laptop down to the bed and spend the day in the flannel sheets. Seriously, those things are EVIL. Or maybe I just happened to get the set that's cursed so that they sap your will to do anything but stay in bed.

I had my final Christmas party of the season last night. It was the choir party, so it ended up involving a singalong around the piano. We managed to even sing in parts for the more common Christmas carols, but all of us completely blanked on the words to "Frosty the Snowman." We were all looking at each other for help while singing "la la la" on that, then jumping in with gusto at the "thumpity thump thump" part we remembered.

I found a new cookie recipe that was a little less labor intensive and that made fewer cookies (and still brought home a ton of leftovers). I made thumbprint cookies, and some of them I filled with the traditional jam (my homemade strawberry jam) and for the rest, I re-melted the chocolate I had left over from my last batch of meringue mushrooms and filled the cookies with that. I like this recipe because the dough isn't too sweet. It's almost like a shortbread. The ones with jam taste a bit like scones, so I think these would be good for a tea party. I may add these to the usual rotation. What's handy is that they use egg yolks -- the same number of yolks as I need of egg whites to make the mushrooms -- so these work well to use up other ingredients from the mushrooms.

Now I have enough sweets to keep me on a sugar high for months. I still have some Swedish spritz cookies, a few meringue mushrooms, the thumbprint cookies and some mint fudge, plus the fruitcake cookies and chocolate nut clusters Mom brought me. And that's not even getting into the sugar cookies that were packaged with the cookie jar I won as a door prize at an event. I am hereby forbidden to bake for a while. Well, until I need to come up with something for New Year's Eve. I might get wild and crazy and not do something sweet for that occasion. Maybe I'll dig through Joy of Cooking and look at appetizer recipes.