Christmas Cookies 2014

I love Christmas cookies. I like that I get to be in charge of them every year (for both sides of the family) and I like making something new each year.

I asked my family for their requests. I received these: almond crack candy, Mexican wedding cakes, peanut butter blossoms with dark chocolate kisses, and chocolate peppermint crackles. Yay! The chocolate chip peppermint crackles were new to me, and I added Cinnamon Sugar cut-outs to round it out.

 

These didn't make it to the Christmas platters but I made gingerbread cake balls for a work holiday potluck. They were a hit!

 

A picture of my handy chocolate melter. I never thought it would get so much use. Melting chocolate for strawberries, for candy melts, cake balls, and now making my own body butter/creams (a later recipe?)

 

Back to cookies.

The Chocolate Chip Peppermint Crackle cookies were better than I expected. They had crushed peppermint candies inside the dough, tasted brownie-like, and then were topped with a piece of peppermint candy to make them pretty. I was so glad these made it on the platter!

The peanut blossoms are a pretty standard cookie but my Jimmy said these tasted better than usual. It's that love ingredient, you know! And the dark chocolate kisses were a great choice. Good job, Richie!

 

 

The Mexican Wedding Cake cookies. Can you believe that I didn't even try these? They are made with pecans. I'm okay with pecans but the peanut butter blossoms and almondy candy called my name so much more.

 

 

I really, really enjoyed making royal icing this year. I had this plan of making gnome cookies for over a month. I wanted to try an easier technique using royal icing and it worked so well! I made one huge batch of royal icing and then separated it into a few bowls for different colors. I only made one consistency of royal icing- thin enough to spread but thick enough to stay put. I used this woman's blog for her technique.

Here's Frosty the Snowman, complete with a flower on his hat! These were fun but required a lot of patience. The colors needed to be piped one color at a time, so they didn't run together. I'd wait 15-20 minutes and then go back to the cookie with another color or to add a detail on top of a color. They were worth it. I think they were darn near perfect.

 

One gnome as Santa!

 

The gnomes were the most fun. I knew my sister would love them :) I was even able to add the tiny eyeballs once I became familiar with the consistency of the royal icing. Delicate work.

 

The cookies dried overnight but I still took care that they wouldn't smear. I kept recalling my Thanksgiving cookie fiasco so I made sure the covered pan had plenty of room above each cookie and then I carried the tray on my lap during the car ride. They made it!

 

Yay for cookies!

 

Click here for the stolen recipe for Gingerbread Cake.

Click here for the stolen recipe for Cinnamon Sugar Cut-out Cookies.

Click here for the stolen recipe for Hershey's Peanut Butter Blossoms.

Click here for the stolen recipe for Mexican Wedding Cake Cookies (or Snowball Cookies).

Click here for the stolen recipe for Chocolate Chip Peppermint Crunch Crackle Cookies.

There is no shared recipe for the Almond Crack Candy. Sorry!

 

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Pumpkin Pie Fudge

I had never made fudge!

 

I made this fudge for my friend Jessica, a fellow pumpkin lover. We had a Secret Santa exchange and I was thrilled to draw her name. She's the best-est!

I bought these pretty little bowls at Target and filled them up with probably 1 1/2 pounds of fudge.

The fudge was very sweet and full of a wonderful pumpkin flavor. I didn't know what to expect but I was pleasantly surprised by how easy fudge is to make. Evaporated milk, white chocolate, marshmallow fluff, walnuts, canned pumpkin, pumpkin pie spice, sugar, etc. I didn't have a good thermometer so I did some guesswork on when it was done. I'm glad it turned out well :)

I froze a bit of the fudge and some of it made it on to my Christmas cookie platters a week later. Yay!

Click here for the stolen recipe for Pumpkin Pie Fudge.

 

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Salted Caramel Chocolate Shortbread Bars

 

 

For a cookie exchange I made these bars. They were a hit! I had several people ask for the recipe. I think that's a good sign that they were liked!

I had one person tell me that they reminded them of a Twix bar. Yes, I see that too!

The bars were not difficult. I think they took a long time though. Each layer needed to be made separately, and allowing for cooling time before adding the next layer.

The shortbread was flakey and buttery. The caramel was firm but soft and chewy. The chocolate was smooth and added a bit of hard texture, kind of keeping all the layers together.

I will definitely make these again!

Click here for the stolen recipe for Salted Caramel Chocolate Shortbread Bars.

 

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Christmas Treats

In early December I started putting together some holiday treats, namely for my baby sis Kiki and my bro-in-law Berto. They are in California and I knew they wouldn't be here for later treats. I was also experimenting on them- could treats be mailed? Would they make it??

I'm told that a gingerbread lost his head. RIP little dude. And one of the stockings broke.

Zeus and Zorro are Kiki's furbabies.

 

Next time I will bubble wrap each cookie! I kid!

I also made homemade Cracker Jacks. I love Cracker Jacks. Why doesn't anyone ever buy me Cracker Jacks?

I made a few Eiffel Towers for giggles. It was a challenge to get the icing thin enough for details. I did the best I knew how.

I think they were pretty for my first attempt!

 

I gave an Eiffel Tower to my friend Jess, at work. She also has a love of Paris and Eiffel Towers :)

 

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BEST

These are not homemade, but next year I don't see why I couldn't make them ahead of time for my wonderful son to decorate. I consider this one of our best projects because it was one of the first Mom/Son baking projects ever! My son had THE BEST time decorating his Gingerbread Boys. He had been reading a book about The Sweet Smell of Christmas and he was pumped about gingerbread boys. They are definitely a part of Christmas for us now :)

Christmas Cookies

I love Christmas baking! First, here is my final tray of cookies.

I made:
Gingerbread cookies
Roll-out sugar cookies
Almond candy
Peppermint marshmallows
Chocolate Peanut Butter Blossoms
Mexican Wedding Cakes


My assembly line of sugar cookie decorating. The squeeze bottles contain the thin "flooding" icing- it squeezes out very thinly and will harden eventually. The pastry bags have my coordinating colors of piping icing.

I found that making a true red icing is very difficult. I remember that I gave up the year before when I started to mix the colors. I got so frustrated by my failure that I didn't even decorate or finish the cookies!

My Christmas trees are pretty wild looking. I remembered that I had christmas light bulb and candy cane decorations from the year before, so we decorated using those. I still had a lot to learn about the piping and flooding techniques!



The swirled candy canes were my favorites! Especially the ones with the green and red.


Marshmallows are surprisingly easy to mae. I would not do the swirls again though. The food color clumped and looked like something unpleasant- blood. The peppermint flavor was nice though. That's all it really needed anyway!

Marshmallows are cut into squares and tossed with powdered sugar to prevent them from sticking together. Mmmmm... imagine these bad boys in some hot chocolate!

Click here for the stolen recipe for marshmallows.

Click here for the stolen recipe for Chocolate Peanut Butter Blossoms. These cookies were an accident. I asked Jim to print out the recipe for the regular Peanut Butter Blossoms, he mistakenly printed CHOCOLATE Peanut Butter Blossoms, with cocoa in the peanut butter cookie dough. It ended up being a very nice mistake!

Click here for the stolen recipe for Martha's Mexican Wedding Cake Cookies. I actually got the recipe from my Martha Stewart Cookies cookbook, but the recipe is online.

There is no stolen recipe for the sugar cookies YET. I still need to type this out from my cookbook Cookie Craft.

There will never be a stolen recipe for the Almond Candy. I am sworn to secrecy on that recipe. For real!

Click here for the stolen recipe for Gingerbread Cookies. These are AWESOME. I did make the mistake of leaving these out overnight (to dry) and if they are on the thin side, again, they get stale. I made them thicker the next time and they were much better. Actually they didn't really get stale but crispy. I think they are much better soft.

I think Christmas cookies are my best baking experiences. I love it :)