12 Days of Homemade Christmas 2016 * My Hot Southern Mess

December is here once again and that means it is time to bring out the cookies and holiday inspired sweet treats! Everyone has their own favorite and my family is no different. Like, for my husband, it just isn’t Christmas without Buckeyes and we always have some classic sugar cookies for my kids to decorate for Santa. Over the past few years, I have shared many of our tried and true favorites, so many that I wasn’t sure what to put on the list for this year. It is getting harder and harder so I switched gears a little bit and have been searching for and testing out some new recipes for this years 12 days of Homemade Christmas.

Being authentic is very important to me as a blogger. Recipes are always tested out and have to pass through my 5 toughest critics, my family. If they don’t like it, I won’t share it and I will tell you we went through a ton of recipes this year. It has easily been the toughest year for my 12 days of Homemade Christmas list. I can’t even begin to tell you how many recipes were made, how many flops I had or remakes until things were tweaked just right on some of the recipes. This list is a tried and true list of recipes that are perfect for this holiday season. They are perfect for gifting or keeping for yourself!

A quick note about this year’s recipes. Each cookie recipe on the list is gluten free but that said they can be made with traditional all-purpose flour. I use Cup 4 Cup Gluten Free All Purpose Flour in my recipes. This is NOT sponsored, it is just the best gluten free flour I have found and can be used as the name implies, it is used cup for cup, the same as regular all purpose flour. It is pricier at about 16.99 a bag, but it is worth it.

I hope you and your friends enjoy my 12 days of Homemade Christmas!