You may not have noticed due to the lack of snow around Orono, but winter has arrived. For me this means getting together with my mom and grandma for a day and baking it out. Everything I know about making cookies, cakes, and more has come from my two inspirations.

Every year we usually stick to the same family recipes which have been adored by my family for generations. Now, I don’t think I’ve had a cookie better than my great grandma Cronk’s sugar cookie, but I thought it would be fun to find some new recipes that I could pass on to my family.

Both these cookies are based on the classic sugar cookie. I was apprehensive about how these cookies would turn out, because why change something that’s already good? Well I tried them out and I couldn’t have been happier with the turnout.

I started with the white chocolate dipped peppermint cookies. The recipe was fairly easy and the only tricky part was how long they stayed in the oven. The cookies were meant to stay light and fluffy so they weren’t in the oven for very long.

After the cookies cooled I melted around 15 ounces of white chocolate chips and began dipping only half of the cookie in, immediately after half the cookie was covered I layed it down on wax paper and poured sprinkles on top. These are by far one of my new favorite cookie recipes and I strongly recommend for all those peppermint lovers out there.

The almond vanilla sugar cookie was easy and fun to make. Since it was a cut out cookie recipe you get to really make each cookie unique. It really only contained a few ingredients and the dough was easy to work with. For the frosting on this cookies I used melted white chocolate, but you can really use whatever your favorite is.

If any of you are looking for new recipes to pass down through your family, I’ve got you covered.