Stuff Happening.

I've been busy today spinning, and bringing stuff to the post, and spinning some more, and then there was some spinning. The day was finished off with some desk work - most importantly some preparation for the TAG conference that starts on Friday.

There also was some baking yesterday evening. We're slowly approaching completion of the "these cookies are what we really want to have this year" stage - including, new in this year's line-up, Spekulatius (which is a simple brownish cookie spiced with cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom).

The worst thing about baking cookies for Xmas? They come out of the oven smelling oh, so nice... but when you try one of the freshly baked ones, they are still rather bland and not as nice as they smell. (Some very few exceptions to this rule exist, but they are really very few.) They need some time to rest in a nice little tin in a nice cool place - some will be fine after just two or three days, but most of them will want a week or so of rest, and the vanilla crescents that we make actually get really good only after three weeks or so. (Which is why they get baked as the first thing every year.) I won't complain too much, though, because that means the baking is better done spaced out and in advance, and you can even stagger the baking in a sequence that will have the ones needing to ripen the longest first.

So jury's still out on how this year's batch of cinnamon stars will have turned out, and if the new Spekulatius recipe will hold up to scrutiny. We'll know in a few days...