For the last several years the Bonna kids and our Bonna Mom get together to bake the Christmas cookies for the upcoming holiday events: Christmas, Scandinavian Christmas and Christmas Eve Brunch.
This “holiday” started out as a way for us to learn some of the Norwegian recipes that my grandmother baked for us every year and soon turned into a major day of baking all the Christmas cookies:
Spritz
Fattigman
Krankakke
Peanut Butter Blossoms
Venetian Cookies
Ginger Chocolate Chip
Gingerbread
(p.s. These aren’t our recipes, but they’re close.)
Depending on how motivated we are and my father’s willingness to run out for multiple forgotten ingredients, our production rate varies incredibly. With four kids under the age of nine who have joined our baking force, we tend to get less done. It also doesn’t help to have bakers who require naps. However, I’ll consider this an investment in future Bonna Bake Days. With those eight additional hands, think of all the other cookies we can bake in years to come.
This year we got through four recipes before everything fell apart with a dance contest between my brother Jeff and niece Caitlin, which was followed by the entire family collapsing around my sister’s dining room table for Jeff’s birthday dinner.
See more photos on flickr, though strangely I have no photos of half the bake day participants.
