Mommas, start your ovens! It's baking time again, and if you need some ideas or have a cookie exchange coming up, check out the hall-of-famers from the annual cookie report compiled by our colleague Janet Keeler.

I've struggled with finding the right annual Christmas cookie in our house because, in my opinion, chocolate chip is not a Christmas cookie. That's an everyday cookie, though fabulous. A Christmas cookie needs to be spiced or nutty or layered or decorated. It only comes out this time of year. But then you get finicky young tastebuds, and my attempts to woo them from the chocolate chip have so far fallen flat.

Though my cookies are loved by adults, I've had a hard time winning over my kids. One of my favorites is the recipe for Vanishing Oatmeal Cookies that you can find on the side of a Quaker Oats box, but instead of 1 cup of raisens, I add 1 cup of white chocolate chips and 1 cup of dried cranberries.  I haven't found even one adult who doesn't swoon over these. But kids? Not so much.

These Chocolate Walnut Puffs from Janet's cookie report (a favorite from her 2005 roundup) were a big hit, except my 9 year old said they tasted "off" and turned up his nose. I'm going to try a second batch and see if I can't win him over because I love them. I did have some thumbs up for this Brickle, right, that disappeared pretty quickly.

As much as I whine about my kids not liking these I should confess that I'm not a big fan of the cutout cookies my mom used to make. She'd make about 6 dozen of them and we'd all sit down to decorate, which was great fun. But after your 30th cookie and you've consumed about a pound of sneaked fingerfuls of icing, you can't look at them anymore.

So what's your plan, Mommas? Have you found a kid-approved Christmas baking ritual?

--Sharon Kennedy Wynne

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