Once you’ve completed twelve cookies, cover your bowls of dough with plastic wrap. You don’t want them to dry out between batches.

Before you put your first pan of cookies in the oven to bake, spread out a length of foil and place a wire rack on top of it. This will hold your hot cookies when you decorate them with the peppermint candy and sugar topping. Once the cookies are completely cool, they can be transferred to a foil-lined box or a platter and you can round up any topping that’s fallen through the rack to use again.

Bake your cookies at 375 degrees F. for 9 minutes. (They should be just beginning to turn golden when you remove them from the oven.)

Immediately remove the cookies from the baking sheet and place them on the wire rack. Sprinkle them with the mixture of candy and sugar while they are still very hot.

Continue to roll, shape, bake, and top your cookies until you run out of dough.

Yield: Approximately 4 dozen cookies, depending on cookie size.

CHOCOLATE PECAN ROLL

Hannah’s 1st Note: You don’t need a candy thermometer to make this candy.

14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk (NOT evaporated milk)

2 one-ounce squares of unsweetened chocolate (I used Baker’s)

2 ½ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (15 ounces)

1 teaspoon butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract ***

pinch of salt

8-ounce package dried apricots (or pineapple, or cherries, or whatever)

1 ½ cups roughly chopped pecans (measure after chopping)

Hannah’s 2nd Note: You don’t absolutely positively have to use unsweetened chocolate squares. If you don’t have them on hand, just use three cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips instead of 2 ½ cups and it’ll work out just fine.

Chop the dried fruit into pea-sized pieces. Then chop the pecans and measure out one and a half cups. (This is easy to do if you have a food processor, but a knife and chopping board will work also.)

Chop the squares of unsweetened chocolate into chip-sized pieces. (They’ll melt faster that way.) Empty the can of sweetened condensed milk into a 2-quart saucepan. Add the unsweetened chocolate pieces and the semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Stir the mixture over low heat until the chocolate has melted. Give a final stir and take the pan from the heat.

Mix in the butter, flavor extract, salt, and the dried fruit. (Don’t add the nuts yet—they’re for later when you make the rolls.)

Put the saucepan in the refrigerator and chill the candy for 30 to 40 minutes.

Take the pan out of the refrigerator and divide the candy in half. Place each half on a two-foot-long piece of waxed paper.

Shape each half into a roll that’s approximately a foot and a half long and about 1½ inches in diameter.

Roll the candy logs in the chopped nuts, coating them as evenly as you can. Press the nuts in slightly so they’ll stick to the outside of the roll.

Roll the finished logs in clean waxed paper, twist the ends closed, and place them in the refrigerator for at least two hours to harden.