Cookie Mania!!!

I had my friends Lauren and Becky over today to have a cookie bake off! Last year we got together and decorated sugar cookies, but this year we wanted to actually put in some effort! I baked a batch of sugar cookies to keep with tradition, then each of us picked our favorite holiday cookie recipe and we set out on our baking spree. (I picked two...surprise, surprise!)

We started with Becky's grandmother's Ginger Spice cookies. She couldn't find the actual recipe, but found the closest one she could from All Recipes. When we started to make these we had no idea how they'd turn out. This recipe calls for a LOT of molasses and and 4 cups of flour! They were very tasty but the end result made 50+ cookies!


Next we moved on to Lauren's Peanut Butter Blossoms. She had her own recipe from home, but if you want to check one out online, this is almost the exact same from Cooks.com. These are one of my all-time favorite cookie and oddly enough, was my first time making them. They were delish!


While the Blossoms were baking, we moved on to my mom's No-Bake Chocolate Coconut Drop Cookies. Again, Cooks.com has a close recipe. These were a holiday staple in my house growing up and super easy to make. Plus, you don't have to worry what they look like! They'd be a great cookie to make with kids. :)


The last cookie on the docket was Paula Dean's Chocolate Gooey Butter Cookies. OMG! THESE WERE AMAING!!! They were so soft, creamy and super chocolatey! It was as if you were biting into a mini little cake. These were a crowd favorite when I brought left-overs in to work.


By the time we were finished with all four batches, we were so sick of being in the kitchen. We had to force ourselves to decorate the cookies and that desperation left us with some pretty funny looking designs!


When all was said and done, we baked about 200 cookies in 5 hours. That's a lot of sugar!! We were left with achy stomaches and sugar headaches but it was a lot of fun!