Hallelujah...

At long last, the day for which I have been preparing myself for the past three months has come to pass -- after a week of prep work and two solid days of baking, I have completed my 2010 Cookie Bonanza. The seven types of cookies that I tested and tweaked were lovingly crafted in my kitchen and boxed to be given away today, all before eleven o'clock last night. I even had all the dishes washed as well! In the past two years, I've usually stayed up until the wee hours of the morning completing everything, so in some regards, my efficiency this year could be looked upon as a type of victory.

However, it is difficult for me to celebrate a full night of rest, when I could have stayed up late adding an eighth cookie to the lineup, which would have meant that I had outdone myself relative to last year. At least I tied last year's level of production, and I feel like I satisfied most of my goals for this year: I had a good balance of cookie types, including cutouts, pressed cookies, drop cookies, bar cookies, and refrigerator cookies; and I had a good balance of flavors, including citrus, spice, chocolate and peppermint among others. If I had to identify weaknesses in this year's lineup, it would have been a lack of something nutty, something caramel-flavored, and perhaps a sandwich cookie. Still, although I was unable to surpass myself this year, I still feel good about this year's giveaway, which consisted of the following:

• 3 Iced Hermit Bar Cookies
• 3 Decorated Sugar Cookies
• 5 Vanilla Bean Spritz
• 2 Peppermint Chocolate Chip Cookies
• 3 Lemon Poppy Seed Thumbprints
• 4 Cranberry Orange Pinwheels
• 3 "World Peace" Chocolate Sablés

I was not quite as pleased with this year's packaging, which came from the Container Store. The festive Martha Stewart boxes that I used in previous years were square, and easier to transport.

Now that I am done, I plan to take a hiatus from baking for the forseeable future. Butter, flour, and sugar have lost all allure to be for the time being, and I'm sure my waistline, and those of my friends and colleagues who have been the test subjects for all my trial baked goods in the last months, will thank me...