So it's getting close to Christmas which means holiday baking! I'm making tins to send out, so I'm trying to get a variety of sweets done. Over the weekend, I finally made a little progress.

First, mexican wedding cookies! They're much like what us southerners know as lady fingers, but in ball form. They're also known as russian tea cakes or polvorones. They have a light, buttery texture - much like a shortbread - and the only real sweetness comes from the confectioner's sugar. Delicious!

Pretty easy/straight-forward recipe too. Cream a cup (2 sticks) of butter (not margarine!) and 1/2 cup white sugar. Then, by hand, stir in 2 cups all-purpose flour and 1 cup finely chopped pecans. Also add in 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, and 1 teaspoon of almond extract. Cover and chill the sticky mixture until it's a workable texture (at least an hour). Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Using your hands, roll the mixture into 1" balls and place onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 15-20 minutes (18 in my oven!) and then allow to cool. When they're *almost* completely cool, roll them in powdered sugar. If they're too hot, they'll melt the sugar and get really messy. That's it! Store them in an airtight container or eat them all on the spot. ;)

Next, I did classic fudge. Now, I don't know if it's because I'm not big on fudge or because I thought there was more to making it (probably a bit of both, tbh), but I've never really tried making my own before. I know there are versions using 5-7+ ingredients, but this recipe had three yes, 3! It was almost too simple. You simply throw a 14oz can of sweetened condensed milk (I swear by Eagle brand), 1/4 cup butter (which is 4 tablespoons, or half of a stick), and 3 cups of milk chocolate chips (or semisweet for a more dark chocolate taste) into a microwaveable bowl. Microwave, while stirring occasionally, for about ~3 minutes or until the chocolate has just melted. Then, stir in 1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts if you prefer. (Okay, so there might be four ingredients, whatever!) I opted to press mine into  only half of the batch once in the pan. After adding nuts, line a dish (pick a size according to how thick/thin you like your fudge and/or how many pieces you want to cut it into) with tin foil and pour mixture into pan. Refrigerate until firm and voila! Done. As I said, I'm not big on fudge, but I've eaten quite a few pieces of this. It's much smoother and creamier than the fudge I'm used to. Also, it's quite chocolatey but it doesn't have that overwhelming sugary-ness of versions using marshmallow creme. I also prefer the version with nuts because it adds a change in texture.

And lastly, there were lemon bars. But to be perfectly honest, the recipe isn't even worth sharing (though everyone in my household would disagree on that, for whatever reason). As a Southerner, I like my lemon bars sugary sweet, with a mild tartness and a buttery, flaky crust. These..well, weren't like that at all. Not enough lemon, sugar, or crust. I'm a lemon bar fanatic, but I ate maybe half of these bars out of the entire batch. They weren't necessarily bad, they just weren't necessarily good either. Tons of room for improvement and I intend on fixing that while I've still got a lot of time on my hands and an entire bag of lemons.

So that's about it! I'll be baking all this week, so expect more cooking posts. :)