My Mum always does a ton of Christmas baking. She makes a variety of cookies like clockwork every year – from almond crescents to jam pinwheels to butter balls, our house was always full of good things to eat and give away this time of year.

My baking routine isn’t so measured – most of it is last minute (I finished a batch of cookies for my coworkers at midnight last night). That said, I wanted to make sure we included some homemade treats tucked in among the gifts to Grandma Male and Mack’s parents, which meant some necessary planning.

Cookies ‘n’ Cream Brownies

To satisfy Grandma Male’s sweet tooth, I thought Anna Olson’s recipe for cookies ‘n’ cream brownies would be perfect. The layer of snow white cream cheese icing on top had a nice winter feel to it, and speckled with crumbled Oreo cookies, how could one go wrong?

They turned out quite well, with a soft, chewy brownie base thanks to the cream cheese inclusion and a balanced icing from a combination of butter and cream cheese. Mack had to taste test them (of course), and declared them gift worthy! And Grandma Male enjoyed them too.

Cookies ‘n’ cream brownies

White Chocolate and Cranberry Drops

For Mack’s parents, we made sure to pick a recipe with full nutritional disclosure (nearly the same as it appears here), and a cookie that included red and white fillings seemed to be a good fit for the holidays.

The good news: the dough was easy to work with (shortbread doughs are hit or miss for me), and didn’t require any refrigeration before baking. The bad news: I didn’t pay attention to the fact that it was a shortbread to begin with – not a problem if we were just delivering the tin ourselves, but since we had to mail them to Yellowknife, cookies at risk of crumbling + rough handling should not mix.

White chocolate and cranberry drops

The story does have a happy ending though – the cookies reached Patti and Martin in good shape!