Christmas Cookies and Treats

Even though the holidays are over (except for New Year's!) here is a recap of what I made this Christmas season!

Gingerbread men and gingerbread women cookies, chocolate chip cookies, Christmas tree sugar cookies are just the beginning!

This chex mix was part of the Christmas goodies our neighbors and co-workers received this season.
The recipe can be found on this post.

I could not pass up these Chinese take-out containers from Hobby Lobby.  They were the perfect size and too cute!

I made some more of the chocolate chip drizzle cookies.

Can't forget the Christmas tree cookies!  The recipe for the cookies and icing can be found on this post. 

Last but not least, I made red velvet cupcakes with green buttercream icing! YUM!

Cheesy Ranch Chex Mix

I found this recipe on the back of the Chex cereal box.  So I guess all of that reading the back of cereal boxes has paid off!

Ingredients:

9	cups Corn Chex®, Rice Chex® or Wheat Chex® cereal (or combination) I used corn and rice Chex
2	cups bite-size pretzel twists
2	cups bite-size cheese crackers
3	tablespoons butter or margarine, melted
1	package (1 oz) ranch dressing and seasoning mix
1/2	cup grated Parmesan cheese

In large microwavable bowl, mix cereal, pretzels and crackers. In small microwavable bowl, microwave butter uncovered on High about 30 seconds or until melted. Pour over cereal mixture; stir until evenly coated. Stir in dressing mix and cheese until evenly coated.

Microwave uncovered on High 3 minutes, stirring after each minute. Spread on waxed paper or foil to cool. Store in airtight container.

The Chex website has a recipe for everyone, whether you like salty, cheesy, or sweet treats!  This weekend while I'm baking a thousand other things, I think I'll make some puppy chow, too! (p.s. how did this get named "puppy chow"? Not that my dogs wouldn't love to have a treat like this...)

*recipe found here.

Christmas Pretzel Treats

At this time of year, (btw, Christmas is only 15 days away!) I find myself in the mood to bake...A LOT!  And while this treat is not something I necessarily had to bake (it did not require going in the oven), it's still adorable, easy, and a great Christmas snack to give to friends and neighbors!

I bought a large container of small pretzel rods (you can use large pretzel rods, too), chocolate bark, and Christmas sprinkles.  Follow the instructions to heat the chocolate. Then it's an easy three step process: 1) dip the pretzels, 2) sprinkle a little dots, and 3)let them dry on wax paper.

Well after I finished all of the pretzel rods, I still had melted chocolate that needed to be used and I am a firm believer in not wasting chocolate.  So what did I do?  I opened a bag of mini pretzels and started dipping!  They are kind of messy looking, but still taste good!

I'm in a group called the Jingle Belles and we are having our annual holiday party to raise money for the Centers for Youth and Families in Little Rock. Check out the website and come to the party if you're in the area!

Pecan Tassies

These treats are so good and perfect for holiday parties!

They are called pecan tassies and I found the recipe on Southern Living's website where they are featuring 22 different pecan desserts. And believe me, this was not the only one I want to try!

The recipe is relatively easy - make the dough, make the filling, put them together, then bake. I would suggest making the holes in the dough as large as possible so it can fit the most amount of filling because that's the real treat! Also, after making the first batch I realized I needed to try to make sure that the filling does not flow over the edges too much because it will burn when baking. Next, I found that using a teaspoon to spoon the filling in is the perfect amount. Lastly, depending on your oven, I would recommend baking them for 2-3 less than what the recipe says.

Oh and I added just a touch of almond extract to the filling. I couldn't resist!

Pumpkin Cookies

To celebrate Halloween, I made some pumpkin cookies with cream cheese icing and goodness gracious these cookies are addicting!

I found the recipe on joyofbaking.com. This website has the recipe for the cookies and icing on one page - so convenient. The recipe calls for canola oil instead of butter, because it is a "healthy" fat, not saturated fat (so that means I can eat twice as many, right?). Plus the oil gives the cookies a soft, moist texture.

I doubled the icing recipe, because I was worried about not having enough, which was good because I only had a little left over. However, I will say that a little bit of this icing goes a long way so be cautious about the amount you use. The recipe made about 20 cookies - perfect for a party. Oh and as always, I put more cinnamon than it calls for (you gotta love cinnamon)!

Easter Cookies

I made Easter egg shaped sugar cookies again this year, but with a little more experience. I also used a different sugar cookie recipe and made homemade icing.

Sugar Cookies Ingredients

• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
  
• 1 1/3 cups sugar
• 3 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 3 cups sifted flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 tablespoons milk

Directions
1. cream shortening, butter, sugar, and vanilla.
2. add eggs, beat well.
3. Sift flour, salt, and baking powder. Stir into creamed mixture along with milk.
4. chill overnight
5. roll onto floured board into 1/4" thickness and cut into desired shapes.
6. Place on greased cookie sheet and bake at 375 degrees for 5-7 minutes. This recipe made 2 1/2 dozen egg-shaped cookies.

White Icing
Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons meringue powder
• 4 cups (1 lb.) powdered sugar
• 6 tablespoons water
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract (use clear if you want pure white icing)
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
  

Directions
Beat all ingredients together until stiff peaks form (8-10 minutes). To vary the consistency, add water to thin and add powdered sugar to thicken. Will ice 2 1/2 - 3 dozen cookies.

The cookies are pretty self-explanatory. It's the icing that gets complicated to use. Whenever I roll out the cookie dough, I always use a lot of flour, so that the dough does not get sticky and therefore hard to transfer to the cookie sheet.

To make the icing process a little easier, I covered my kitchen counter in wax paper and taped it down. This way I had plenty of room to spread out the cookies. After letting the cookies cool, I began the tedious process of icing them. As you can see in the below picture, I drew a border around the egg with a #3 icing tip. This can get frustrating, because sometimes the border is not straight or there are breaks in it. Just take your time and make sure it is a complete circle, otherwise when you ice the middle the icing will leak out. Also in this picture, there are eggs that are have already been filled-in with white icing. To do this, put a couple of scoops of icing in a small bowl or cup and gradually add small amounts of water to it until it is runny, constantly stirring it. Then transfer the icing to a plastic bag and cut a small hole in the corner of the bag. Squeeze the icing on to the cookies, making sure to stay in the lines. I squeeze some on about 5 cookies then take a tooth pick and spread it around evenly. I also use the tooth pick to pop some of the air bubbles that form. Let these dry for 1 hour before starting on the details.

Divide the rest of the original icing into bowls and put 2-3 drops of food coloring in each. I did pink, yellow, blue, and green. Then I used tip #5 to make the designs.

If you have any questions just leave it in the comment section!

St. Patrick's Day Brownie Cupcakes

For St. Patrick's day I made some brownies, but instead of using a rectangle-shaped pan, I put them in a cupcake pan. Once the batter was made, I poured enough so that it would cover 1/4 of each cupcake then I placed a peppermint patty and poured the remaining batter on top. I saw this idea on another website and thought I should try it out because I love mint chocolate flavored desserts (if you couldn't tell by the cake I just made). Since I was baking brownies and not chocolate cake mix in the cupcake pan, it took longer for them to bake (about 25 minutes).

For the icing, I used the same buttercream recipe that I used for the previous post, but this time I put 5 drops of green food coloring. To top it off, I put green sprinkles.

Gingerbread Cookies

During the Christmas Season, I also made gingerbread men cookies. I purchased the cookie cutter at Eggshells Kitchen Co. in Little Rock. At that time they only had a gingerbread man cookie cutter, but I was in there recently and they had a gingerbread woman, so of course I had to get one! I really like these cookie cutters because they are a good size, not too small but not too big.

The recipe I used I found on cooks.com. It's probably the simplest gingerbread cookie recipe I've ever seen.

GINGERBREAD MEN COOKIES

2 3/4 cup of flour
1/2 tsp. of soda
1 tsp. of ginger
1/2 tsp. of cinnamon
1/2 tsp. of salt
1/2 cup of shortening
1/4 cup of brown sugar
3/4 cup of molasses
1 beaten egg
1 tsp. of hot water
1 tsp. of vinegar

Mix all ingredients. Roll onto a well floured surface. Cut into gingerbread men. Place on a well greased cookie sheet dusted with flour. Bake at 350 degrees until brown, about 8 minutes or so, depending on the oven.

After letting the gingerbread men cool on a cooling rack I began to ice them. I didn't really ice them like I did the Christmas trees, because gingerbread cookies are not covered in icing (much to the disappointment of some people). Instead, I used a round tip and icing bag with vanilla icing and outlined the cookies and put icing dots down the middle in order to make sure that the redhots could stick. You can't have gingerbread cookies without redhots!

Make sure you use plenty of flour when you are rolling out the dough and putting the cookies onto the baking sheet, because this dough becomes sticky very quickly. As you can tell, some of these gingerbread men are not perfect. Some look like they are leaping through the air or doing a weird dance move. That's because when I was transferring them to the baking sheet their arms or legs landed differently (if that makes any sense). But I kind of like it. It makes them unique. Next year keep an eye out for the most adorable gingerbread women! I wish I had had that cookie cutter this year, but I couldn't find the perfect one and I didn't want to settle for a cookie cutter that was not the same size as the gingerbread man, because that just wouldn't be right.

Christmas Cookies

About a week before Christmas we had a snow/ice day and I did not have to come into work (woo!). After sleeping in a couple of hours, I decided it was time to get up and do something with my day and since my parents were having a Christmas party that weekend, it was obvious that I should make something for that. I decided to make Christmas cookies. They were shaped like trees and stars, but I only have a picture of the trees.

I used the sugar cookie recipe from this post and the icing recipe from this post. For the tree decorations I use pre-made icing, because the icing that you use to ice the cookies would be too runny for the details. You can do the tree decorations in whatever color you want, but I chose colors that would stand out on the cookie. For the stars, I made yellow icing and used a star tip. For icing the trees, I found it went faster if you use a sponge brush. So I used a 1" brush. This was a great project for a cold, icy day!

Festivus for the Rest of Us

For the past couple of years, Ben's dad's side of the family has started to celebrate Festivus. For those of you who are not fans of Seinfeld, here's a link to Wikipedia's definition of Festivus. This year, I made a Festivus cake, but since the holiday does not have certain colors or a theme really, I had to be creative. I thought about what actually happens on Festivus: the airing of grievances, feats of strength, the presence of a steel pole (or the Festivus pole). Then I began to think how I could incorporate those into a cake. Let me tell you, that was difficult.

The cake ended up looking like (or is supposed to look like) a sheet of white paper on which a person has written their grievances. Then I tried to make a Festivus pole. With the help of Ben's mom, we figured out that by wrapping aluminum foil around the cardboard pole-like-thing that comes on a hanger (removing it from the hanger, of course) it would resemble a pole.

The grievances I picked were just general ones: bad grammar/spelling, littering. Also, I found that when writing with icing it's best to keep it to 1-2 words. I believe the cake was yellow cake and cream cheese icing (I feel like I'm starting to sound like a broken record with the cake/icing combination, but people request it, honestly).

Just for kicks, I'm including a picture of Ben's Granddad doing his feat of strength. Pretty amazing, huh?

Mardi Gras

I'm not a huge Mardi Gras-er, I've never been before, but I love King Cakes. Southern Living has a great recipe for a Traditional King Cake. This recipe makes 2 King Cakes, so that's a plus. The icing recipe I used came from a reader of Southern Living who loves cream cheese almost as much as I do.

1 8 oz. package of softened cream cheese
1 1/2 to 2 cups powdered sugar
1 stick of butter (room temperature)
1 to 2 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Mix the ingredients together until smooth glaze forms.

Just a warning, this is going to be a longer post than usual, because I want to show some pictures of the process to prepare the dough for baking. In the recipe, when it says divide the dough in half, I did so and set one half to the side while I worked with the first half and got it ready for the baking sheet.

Roll out the dough to a 12 x 22 inch rectangle. Spread softened butter all over the dough, leaving a one inch border. Then sprinkle cinnamon and sugar over the butter. This was where I made a small mistake. I did not put enough cinnamon (at least not as much as I like). So I suggest that if you think you have put too much cinnamon and sugar to put a little bit more, because what's a King Cake with out lots of cinnamon?

I think this is the trickiest part of making the cake. Make sure your hands are well-floured because the cake will be sticky and difficult to roll into a "jelly roll" type fashion.

I then carefully picked up the roll and placed it on a greased baking sheet in an oval shape, pressing and sealing the ends together. The person working in the bakery at Kroger was nice enough to give me a plastic baby to put in the cake and some bright green sprinkles!

Then the bread has to rise again for 30 minutes at 85 degrees. So I covered it with a towel and set it on the stove while it was pre-heating. Then I baked it for 15 minutes at 375. Once it is done baking, it is important to leave it on the baking sheet and place it on a cooling rack for about 10 minutes. After this, I spread the cream cheese glaze on the cake and put on the green, yellow, and purple sprinkles (the yellow and purple sprinkles came in a 6 pack of multi-colors, but the green included was more of a pastel green, which just wasn't going to cut it, so that's why it was so nice of the Kroger bakery to give me green sprinkles).

I then transferred the cake to a foil covered platter and cut a slice of cake to see how it turned out! I was very pleased!

Halloween Cupcakes

For Halloween, I made cupcakes that look like pumpkins. Ben was particularly helpful with these cupcakes. He tried to figure out how to help me make them look exactly like the picture we saw in a magazine, right down to the indentations in the icing to make it look more pumpkin-like (you'll understand what I mean later).

I used chocolate and yellow cake mix for the cupcakes and white icing. To make the icing orange I did a little bit of elementary school thinking...what two colors make orange...red and yellow. So I took the red and yellow food coloring and put 1-2 drops of each into the icing and mixed it. Then added more until I got the orange I wanted.

The picture of Halloween cupcakes I saw had these indentations to make them look more like a pumpkin. The article suggested using toothpicks to make a line in the icing, but this did not work at all. Instead, the toothpick just got covered in icing and totally messed it up. So after a few tries, Ben and I decided to forgo using the toothpicks altogether (how important were indents in the icing, really?).

To finish them off, we put orange-tinted sparkling sugar sprinkles and pretzel sticks. I imagine that the orange sprinkles would be easier to find around Halloween, but I bet if you really needed them then a store like Hobby Lobby or Michael's would have them year-round. The pretzels were the stems and I broke them in half. However, I noticed that the pretzels get soggy after about a day, so I would not suggest eating them. Here's what the cupcakes ended up looking like:

While we're on the theme of Halloween, here's a picture of two jack-o-lanterns Ben and I carved! So cute!

We wanted to go with more traditional-like jack-o-lanterns, can't beat that.

Easter Egg cookies

For Easter 2008, my college roommate, Elizabeth, and I made Easter egg cookies. The cookie cutter was purchased at Target (great store). It was the first time I used a metal cookie cutter with rubber around the rim. Oh, and just a side note, these cookies were made while living at Chateau Ghetto.


If you haven't noticed, Easter was before my birthday and before I really got into the whole cookie/cake decorating. Therefore, Elizabeth and I were using what little decorating instruments we had in our house, which were mostly plastic bags and food coloring.

For the cookie recipe we used our friend Ann's.

Deluxe sugar cookies

1 cup softened butter or margarine
1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. almond extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cream of tarter

Let butter soften. Mix thoroughly the butter, confectioner's sugar, egg, vanilla, and almond extract. Bend in flour, soda and cream of tarter. Cover and chill for 2-3 hours. Hear oven to 375 degrees and divide the dough in half. Roll into 3/16ths of an inch thick on a lightly floured cloth covered board. Cut into shapes and place on greased baking sheet. Bake 7-8 minutes or until lightly brown. Makes 5 dozen 2-2 1/2 inch cookies, unless you use a cookie cutter, then it makes 3 dozen, depending on the size of the cutter.

For the decorating, we used cream cheese icing for the base, then for the details (which now looking back I realize how elementary they are) we separated the icing into individual bowls. We had red (which makes pink, perfect for Easter but bad for making razorback cookies), also we had blue, green and yellow food coloring. Like I'm sure many of you have done, we put the icing into plastic bags and cut off the tip of a corner of the bag so we could have more control over the icing when making designs.