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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Scotcheroos

 

 

It was my dear friend Jessica's birthday and I volunteered to make something for her birthday bash at work. I was told that Scotcheroos are one of her favorite treats. Challenge accepted! I didn't even have any idea what they were really. I knew there was a chocolate icing, that's it.

Where do you turn if you need a good recipe? Brown Eyed Baker! My favorite blogger. Of course she had a recipe and it was a snap. Really! One of the easiest recipes I've made. And oh so good!

My work friends did enjoy these. One said that these are good because they aren't hard and tough. I guess that's a common problem. But not with a BEB recipe :)

These are like rice krispy bars but with peanut butter. And BEB suggests a chunky peanut butter for added texture in the bars. A delightful idea. And the chocolate topping with butterscotch and chocolate melted together? Yum! (I didn't really think I like butterscotch. Turns out I kinda do. Occasionally.)

Click here for the stolen recipe for Scotcheroos.

 

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Lighter Thai Inspired Wraps & Crunchy Asian Cabbage Salad (repeat)

I really love this picture. You can't get any more colorful than that!

 

This is a great combo! Some of the same ingredients are in each food, but it made it easier for chopping.

The peanut sauce in the wrap sandwich is awesome! I actually made a 1 1/2 recipe so we could enjoy it a bit more. (Good decision, Lisa. *pat on the back*) The sauce ingredients are all staples in our household, so even better. -lime juice, peanut butter, sesame oil, soy sauce, ground ginger-

I think we got all of our vitamins through vegetables in just this one meal! No complaints from the husband. He really did dig this meal.

Click here for the stolen recipe for Lighter Thai Inspired Wraps.

I've made the Crunchy salad before. This is the post where I wrote about it.

 

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Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cheesecake Bars

I've fallen out of blogging. I've been cooking but everything's been on repeat.

I felt like baking today though! I also wanted to make a little something for a gift.

I had to revise the original recipe because I couldn't find chocolate graham crackers at both stores I went to today. I could have used Oreos but I didn't feel like dirtying my food processor. Graham cracker crumbs come nice and easy in a box, all ready.

The first piece is always messy looking, so just picture these a bit neater and precise. And then imagine that piece inhaled, because that's what I did with a glass of milk.

Do you know why I often make cupcakes and not other impressive desserts? You can taste test cupcakes! You can't taste test a 3 layer cake! Bars are also my friend. We can cut into them, enjoy a taste, and then I can cut up the rest and put them on a pretty plate.

These cheesecake bars are not overly sweet. The peanut butter is subtle. The chocolate glaze is a nice crackle of sweetness on top. So yes, they are good!

Click here for the stolen recipe for Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cheesecake Bars.

 

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Faux Ice Cream

OMG this totally feels like cheating!

This ice cream is super easy and healthy? Is it really? I froze banana slices, just thinking I'd make some more banana bites or something. I then remembered the Pinterest idea of making "ice cream" out of bananas.

So frozen banana slices, a few tablespoons of peanut butter, and a few teaspoons of cocoa.

 

It is creamy, sweet, and delicious! I just can't believe this isn't a kind of ice cream! I think frozen banana slices are now a must so I can whip up this ice cream whenever I have a sweet tooth!

If you must see a recipe, click here for the stolen recipe for One Ingredient Ice Cream.

 

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Peanut Butter Banana Bites

This is Pinterest inspired. I saw this idea quite a while ago and today was the day. I had some ripe bananas, some extra chocolate (from the chocolate fountain this month), and a desire for something sweet and small.
I was not disappointed that I needed to eat two of these PBBB to get a picture in focus. I put these in the freezer for the chocolate to set, and there they will remain for quick nibbles.

There is no recipe. I simply scooped a bit of peanut butter on banana slices, put them in the freezer while I melted the chocolate in my Wilton pot, and then spooned chocolate on top of each Bite. I let most of the chocolate drip off so the chocolate wouldn't pool around each Bite.

They taste just as you would imagine- simply addictive!

Peanut Butter Cookie Sandwiches

OMG! I might be just in a really good cookie mood or these were just ridiculously good!

I am home on a snow day (!!!!!!!) and had the dough whipped up before 8:30am. How lovely to have all of these ingredients on hand (: The dough had to chill a bit before you roll it out, which makes it fussier than I like but I had the time today. And you're welcome to my husband for doing the dishes in all of my spare time too!

But the dough ripped apart easily when I tried to roll it out between waxed paper sheets, which is my preferred method, so I ended up making traditional peanut butter cookies with the criss cross pattern I'm top. I'm sure my cookies are thicker than the recipe's and it will make fewer cookie sandwiches but oh well.

I ended up baking the cookies for even less time than the recipe states (about 14 minutes) so I don't know what's up with that.

I posted on Facebook that there isn't much better than peanut butter cookie dough... But I might have been wrong- this peanut butter filling is the bomb diggety!

Can you believe my little son refuses to try even a bite or a lick of peanut butter "frosting"?! Crazy kid.

Click here for the stolen recipe for Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies.

 

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

A co-worker was having a birthday and they had a lunch party for her. I offered to bring cupcakes. And then it turned out that I couldn't even attend the lunch but I sent the cupcakes with someone else. They loved them :)

I've wanted to make a peanut butter and chocolate combo for a while, but it's not one that gets requested often so when I had free rein to make "anything" I picked these.

The peanut butter frosting was FABULOUS. Seriously, fabulous. Peanut butter and cream cheese? YES PLEASE!

The peanut butter filling tasted like the inside of a Reese's peanut butter cup. It was pretty firm, I wished it was a bit fluffier but it was fine. Delicious.

Click here for the stolen recipe for Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes.

Peanut Butter Cup Crunch Bars

With every bar that my husband Jim eats these go up on his "Top 5" list of things I've ever made. They were at #4 but today they're at #2, second only to his beloved Chocolate Intensity Cake.

What can't you love about a chewy brownie topped with peanuts and chopped peanut butter cups, and then a layer of chocolate, peanut butter and rice krispies? Yeah, sinful.

Click here for the stolen recipe for Peanut Butter Cup Crunch Bars. You won't regret it!

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 :)

South Beach Peanut Butter Cookies

Another South Beach recipe. Phase One of the SB Diet is so hard that we've needed to find a dessert, something sweet that we can "cheat" with. This has satisfied us in those situations. And just three ingredients!

I'm not a big fan of Splenda. I actually don't like the taste in anything else but these cookies. It's weird. I can't explain it.

My husband really is the one that bakes these.

Click here for the stolen recipe.