As chef and owner of a catering and event planning business for the past seven years of my life, the Christmas season meant, nose to the grindstone, 20 hour work days, fall off the map till after the holidays, lifestyle. Not exactly the healthiest way to live but necessary since almost half of our profits were driven by holiday revenues.

This December 1st, I found myself pulling out some Christmas music, pouring myself a glass of wine and spending a Saturday afternoon baking Christmas cookies, not thousands at a time – just a few dozen to share with friends and family. How civilized…

Here are a few of my delicious morsels.

These are my grandmother’s recipe. She always called them Portuguese Walnut Cookies because a Portuguese woman down the street gave her the recipe years ago. This original recipe resulted in me producing 500 cookies per batch, using measurements in tea-cup-fulls and calling for shortening. When I was the pastry chef at the AGO I revised this recipe, standardizing the measurements and replaced shortening with butter. They are dipped in a honey syrup and are moist and divine although I doubt they are Portuguese in origin, they seem more Greek or Middle Eastern.

These buttery caramel walnut bars are a derivation of a Moritz Tart made in Switzerland. It is usually made into a pie but I thought it would make good bars so I doubled the recipe and changed the format to a sheet pan. They turned out great and freeze really well.

This is an old family favourite, known in Italy as Mostacioli but in our family as “Toutouns.” Also a recipe yielding hundreds of cookies with questionable measuring that required much tweaking for consistent and manageable results. I reworked this one for a Canadian Living magazine story this past June (click on the link above for the recipe). If you try it I can guarantee good results.

Check out Jaquelyn’s beautiful flooded cookies - hey are gorgeous!

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