We finalized our baking the other day and shipped our care package to Capt Sarah Armstrong in Iraq! Hopefully she will receive our box in a day or two, fingers crossed. She did make a comment on her site about mail having been delayed recently. What did we ship, you ask? Ah, we were busy little bakers, but I didn’t get as much into the box as originally planned.

We started off making Oatmeal Squares, a delicate oatmeal/brown sugar cookie that is insanely good. They just melt in your mouth. Unfortunately, they are in fact very delicate and crumbled farily easily while I was removing them from the pan. I was afraid they would turn into really sweet granola by the time they made it to Iraq. So, those had to be put aside for the family to enjoy (I hate when that happens!) and we tried something else.

Next we made Oatmeal Macaroons with nuts and raisins. Now we’re talking! These cookies were pretty sturdy and crispy, delicious and crunchy. The batter made around 5 dozen cookies, too, so that was two gallon Ziplock bags of yummy goodness.

Third batch was the sugar cookies with the flags, our “cheat” cookies because they were premade. They turned out very nice though. So nice that not as many as I would like made their way to Sarah.  :-)

Finally, I was running out of energy so we made lemon shortbreads. Oh my, these were fantastic! I used a lemon my friend gave me from her tree to zest. The recipe is slightly modified from the source, but it basically has butter, sugar, flour, vanilla and lemon zest. Wow! I rolled them into 1″ balls, then pressed them flat with a fork. When I asked John to taste test them, he said he needed another 6 or 7 to be sure if they were good. I wound up making a double batch because they were such a hit at home! I plan to make these again because they were so easy and so delicious, and they can be made with cocoa powder too for chocolate shortbreads. Yum!

Last but not least, we included three boxes of instant drink mix singles. I had heard these would be welcomed, so I hope the flavors are as yummy as they sounded. The box was full, and I had originally planned to include Brownie Drops, but really I just ran out of gumption. Baking with a toddler can be fun, but when she loses interest in between batches, she can go play, while Mom winds up making the rest of the cookies. I don’t mind really because I love to bake, it’s just a little tiring on my back. Small sacrifice compared to what Sarah, her comrades and all our military are doing. I can take some Advil and suck it up! However, I think in the future, I might just power through a weekend making batter and freezing it. Then I can either cut off rounds, or thaw and bake, depending on what I want to do.

I’ll post pictures later, I just didn’t find the time to download them from the camera this weekend. I was too busy with Melody making picture frames and other gifts for friends. We had a great, messy time!

UPDATED: Added pictures to the gallery!

Click this insanely cute picture to see more.