Look, my mother sent us her Christmas Cookie recipes from Germany, as always neatly typed up, since she is convinced that her handwriting will only lead to misunderstandings…”Spritzgebaeck”, “Berliner Brot” and my favorite “Vanillekipfel.”

In the spirit of sharing and domesticity and because our new kitchen is beautiful and perfect for crowds, we decided to throw a little “BINTH Cookie Bake Off” at the studio and invited some of our favorite girls over: Bonnie, Sarah Stedman from Scrappy Nation, Rachel Webber who came with Celeste, Abby our Information Architect, Adrienne our dear designer friend, Kristen, Julia, Kristine, Gigi from DFCB…a good and classy crowd going after the perfect Almond “Vannille Kipfel.” ( Note that anybody wearing black in the images is from DFCB. Of course.)

I tested the recipe the day before. I mean look at me, my mom would be proud.

I even borrowed Brad’s KitchenAid, the “workhorse” he inherited from his grandmother…

Yep, look at that…how pretty and civilized, the cookies, the wine, the little vase filled with twigs of mint…

… we even put together little take-out boxes, filled them with BINTH cards and polka-dot waxy tissue paper-leaving just enough room for a handful of fresh baked German cookies to take home…that was the thinking. ( I felt oh so very Martha about all this…)

And I do believe this all would have worked out, were it not for the fact that my mother sent her recipes in German. And I am still not sure what exactly got lost in the translation from grams to pounds and table spoons and knife tips, all I know is that whatever we mixed in Brad’s grandma’s mixer was just not right. Yummy non the least, but definetly NOT right…

Because what went into the oven like this:

came out like that:

Which lead to a high level of confusion.

and the attempt to try different approaches, like testing out Linnea’s antique wooden cookie stampers, or, hey, let’s just do cut-outs, or how about just some simple chocolate chip delight…

But, we had fun, we had red wine and we covered some good gossip-so what, nobody left with any cookies…

Sorry mother, I tried.