I want to live next door to The Cooks Next Door

I'm going to tell you all the same thing I told Joe last week: I now feel like an authentic adult female.

You would think getting married and living with a man would inspire this feeling. Or perhaps pushing a tiny human being from my body would be sufficient.

But no, it took creating a Christmas goodie plate FROM SCRATCH!

(Public service announcement to Santa: please bring me a camera for Christmas so I can stop taking dorky camera phone photos. Thankssomuch.)

May I boast about myself and Madeline? Because we made:

• Chocolate and butterscotch peanut clusters drizzled with white chocolate
• Cherries dunked in dark chocolate
• Butter pecan fudge
• Ah-mazing sugar cookies
  

I am a serious dunce when it comes to making sweets. If you think I'm exaggerating at the expense of laughter, just take a walk down memory lane with me. Remember the Great "Oh Fudge" Event of '08?

And when it comes to sugar cookies? Oh my word, I won't even try to recount the number of times (and number of different recipes) I attempted to make cut-out sugar cookies, only to wind up throwing half the uncooked dough away when the first half came out brown and crunchy and distorted.

But last week, I became a bit obsessed with The Cooks Next Door and in two days, I made:

• the aforementioned candy
• the ah-mazing sugar cookies
  
• Chicken with yogurt and pomegranates
  
• Herb couscous with citrus and pomegranate dressing

If you click over to the sugar cookies post, you can see my incredibly hyper comment written when I ran over to the computer the second after I pulled the first cookie sheet out of the oven and realized, "OHMYWORDITWORKEDITWORKED." I'm pretty sure The Cooks think I'm insane.

If you are looking for some kid-friendly recipes, I highly recommend these. Madeline helped me with every step of the process. She dried the cherries and dipped them in chocolate. She dumped all the ingredients in the pot for the fudge. She poured the peanuts in the melted goodness.

And for the sugar cookies, she helped with every step and I'm not kidding. She dumped ingredients. She used the mixer. She rolled the dough and cut them out with the cookie-cutters. She transferred them to the cookie sheet. She iced and sprinkled.

It was a blast.

We made the cookies in one day and the candy the next day. I thought the candy-making would be long and laborious. But we made it all in two hours, including kitchen clean-up without a dishwasher.

(I only know the exact time because my mother-in-law was coming over that afternoon and my house is always sparkling clean and shiny when she visits all the time.)

I'm pretty sure for the next 67 Christmases, I will be making the exact same recipes. If it ain't broke....