Home-Made Christmas Goodies

It has once again been a while!! It has been a very busy last few months. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year, and Valentine's Day, and Family Day (if in Canada), plus a nice Spring Break and everything else in between while I was absent.

Work has been very busy, but it hasn't prevented me from baking up a storm. Although I haven't been posting I have been documenting all of my creations with the hope that I will one day start posting again. And here I am! 

Some big news has happened between my last post (December 9th!) and now and that is that I'm engaged :) This Christmas was our first year staying in the same city (I usually go home to my parents and sister, while Josh stays here with his). I knew it would be ultra special for that reason alone, but in the middle of prepping for our big family dinner (everyone was to come to our place) we went out on Christmas Eve to enjoy the Christmas lights and whoala! We're engaged. A few details missing but that's the gist. We are very excited and are planning for the summer of next year.

It was a great way to start the official holiday season.

We had a lovely Christmas morning together filled with yummy food, presents, my favourite drink (see photo below) and preparing for our family dinner.

Orange Juice & Gingerale

One of the best presents that I received was from Josh. For any occasion his gifts are always the best, but I always give him a list of what I am hoping for - sooooo they are always good because it's always what I want... For one of my Christmas gifts though, this year he thought to get a personalized apron made for me with Wilma: Loft Living on it with a cupcake - So Sweet! Best present! And very fitting for my blog with all of my baking (and cooking).

In the evening, we had a house full of family and enjoyed a nice turkey dinner.

Table Settings

We prepared three sets of goodies to give to the family. Baking and putting together these items really helped the house feel like Christmas leading up to the actual holidays. Home-made gifts are always the best when you can eat them!! I decided to include four types of goodies:

1) Toasted, Sugar-Cinnamon Walnuts
2) Hot Chocolate with Marshmallows
3) Chocolate Vanilla Spiral Cookies (previously posted here)
4) Soft Caramels

Christmas Gift Treats

Toasted Sugar-Cinnamon Walnuts

2 cups whole or halved walnuts
2 tbsp butter
6 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375 degrees
Melt sugar on stove top
Spread walnuts thinly on pan
Pour melted butter over walnuts
Combine sugar and cinnamon
Sprinkle over walnuts and mix
Bake for 15-20 minutes
Half way through, mix and add more sugar/cinnamon mixture

Let cool. Try not to eat them all. And package them up.


Hot Chocolate with Marshmallows

2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup cocoa
2 1/2 cups powdered milk
2 tsp cornstarch
1 cup mini marshmallows

Sift all ingredients together except for the marshmallows
Package and add mini marshmallows to the top
Add an instruction to say add 3 tbsp to 1 cup of water (or milk), stir well, and drink up.


Chocolate Vanilla Spiral Cookies

For ingredients and instructions see one of my previous posts here.


Soft Caramels

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 cups whipping cream
3/4 cup corn syrup

Heat all ingredients to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly
Boil uncovered, stirring frequently until it reaches 245 degrees - takes around 35 minutes (don't let it go higher or else it will become harder)
Pour into a greased baking dish
Cool completely
Cut into pieces (I use a pizza cutter, works so much better than a knife or scissors)
Individually wrap in wax paper

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And there you go! You can make your own baked goods and candies for anyone you want...maybe for next Christmas.

So now that I went back 4 months, I will come back to the present - I just wanted to fill in the blanks a bit.

Beautiful Cupcakes

This weekend I created beautiful cupcakes for a co-worker who requested my services - thank you! 

Chocolate cupcakes with Cream Cheese Buttercream. Simple and elegant. No added sparkle required.

*When packaging cupcakes, I normally use cardboard boxes but find that the cardboard seems to absorb the oil from the icing - which doesn't look every nice. I wanted to find plastic containers but had a hard time finding exactly what I wanted online without having to order from the States. When I was searching for other ideas, it was mentioned that you can go to your local bakery and ask for some of theirs. Since I was on a time crunch, that is what I did and it worked perfectly! And inexpensive too.

I printed off my labels.

And packaged up the cupcakes.

I love the look of them packaged.

Hope they were well received at her party! I enjoyed making them.

Snowflake Sugar Cookies

At work this week we had a bake sale to help fundraise for our Christmas Party. I thought it would be fun to make a Christmas themed cookie so I decided to use a snowflake cookie cutter that I purchased recently. I am not a huge cookie cutter fan - I usually just use the rim of a glass but thought I would try something new.

The outcome was that they looked great - but more than less than half of the batch turned out. The dough formed almost three dozen cookies and I was lucky to get a small portion of that. Everyone second one seemed to break on me as I lifted them from the cookie tray. I was so devasted that I even requested silence from the tv in the living room so that I could concentrate. I luckily had just under two dozen cookies. I thought, "okay, this will be enough - no biggy, I won't need to go buy something". But nope...that wasn't the end of it. While I was icing them one by one thinking what a roll I'm on and then bam! an arm breaks off! What the heck!! As I kept making my way through the rest of the icing, I was crossing my fingers that I would at least get a dozen out of this by the end. Thankfully, 14 made it through the rounds!

In the end beautiful, sparkling Almond Buttercream Sugar Cookies were created.

Although....I think I might stick to the good 'ole reliable circular cookies for a while until this experience becomes less vivid and I forget how frustrating it was. Darn Bake Sale! - although we did raise over $200!

I iced the little arms that broke off and brought those into work for people to munch on before the Bake Sale and left the really mangled ones at home for Josh! Oppps, sorry babe! Thanks for the encouragement and quiet working space though, I guess I owe you.


 

Treatzza Pizza - Almost.

Ice Cream Cakes have always been my favourite type of cake. These cakes would of course come from Dairy Queen which also sells Treatzza Pizza's - a delicious dessert-take on pizza. Between this idea and an episode of Paula Dean, I created the Graham Cracker Cinnamon Pecan Caramel Vanilla Ice Cream Pizza!

It was toooo easy to make which may become a problem in our house because I may decide to whip one up whenever I feel like it.

What you need:

1 store bought graham cracker pie shell (or you can make your own if you want)
1 litre vanilla ice cream
1 tbsp cinnamon
3/4 cup caramel sauce (I made this but you could also buy store bought if you want)
1/2 cup halved pecans

The pizza needs to be done in steps so that each step has time to set by being in the freezer.

Start the first layer of the pizza. Spread a thin layer of cinnamon onto the crust of the pie shell. On top of that, scoop ice cream to almost fill the shell. You will have to use your hands to spread and flatten the ice cream. Be careful not to crack the graham cracker shell and work quickly. Sprinkle with another layer of cinnamon. Place into the freezer to help reset and harder the newly softened ice cream.


While the ice cream is hardening, begin the caramel sauce.

Caramel Sauce:

1 cup sugar
1 cup whipped cream
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp corn syrup
1/4 cup butter

Over medium heat, combine all ingredients for caramel sauce. Stir constantly. Bring to a boil and continue boiling until temperature gets to 220 F. Stir frequently. Remove from heat and pour into a heat safe jar. Be careful - this mixture if very hot.


Let cool. You don't want to pour hot sauce over ice cream. In this case anyways.

Sprinkle the pecan pieces over the ice cream and cinnamon.

Once the caramel is cool, slowly drip the sauce evenly over the top and sprinkle the remaining cinnamon.

Place back in the freezer for 30 minutes or more until the caramel is set.

And there you go! A DQ-like Treatzza Pizza.

Use a pizza cutter to slice. This made for an easy and mess-free cut.

I'm definitely going to try this with different varieties of toppings. I see a chocolate themed one in my future...I think I'm going to use an Oreo crust pie shell next time to enhance the chocolate theme.

YAM Fries

I can remember the first time that I ever tried Yam Fries. They have become so popular in restaurants. I couldn't resist trying to make them myself. These turned out so good that we have made them several times since the first.

The recipe is so easy and few ingredients are needed, which I always like.

Ingredients:

1 large yam
1-2 tbsp corn starch
3-4 tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper
Large ziploc bag (or something similar)

* This will yield 2 large portions.

STEP ONE:

Peel the yam and cut into strips. *Be careful while cutting the yam up as it is quite tough

STEP TWO:

In a large ziploc bag toss in 1-2 tbsp of corn starch and the yam strips, seal the bag and shake it until the yams strips are completely coated.

STEP THREE:

Pour in the olive oil and add salt and pepper; shake bag again.

STEP FOUR:

Evenly spread the yam strips onto baking sheets (you will need two sheets). Spread them so they are spread in a single layer and the majority of yams are not touching one another. If they are piled on, the yams will steam and won't crisp up.

STEP FIVE:

Place in the oven at 425 F for 30 minutes; toss them half way through. Continue baking until your desired crispness.

STEP SIX:

Pair with a dipping sauce - whatever you want. We used a spicy chipolte mayo.

STEP SEVEN:

Eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat!!

Chocolate Vanilla Spiral Cookies

I made these cookies last week with my mom in mind. Among other types of cookies, these spiral cookies are a trade mark of growing up (and they still make an appearance when we go home to visit). The cookies that I made aren't her recipe. Hers come out nice and fluffy and these ones came out crunchy. The fluffy ones sound better but these were actually quite good, just a different type of cookie.

The recipe that I used came from Robinhood.ca.

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
2 cups flour
3 tbsp coca powder
1 egg beaten with 1 tsp of water

STEP ONE

Beat butter and sugar until well blended and light in colour; add vanilla and salt (I left the salt out as my butter was salted); add flour and mix until crumbly

STEP TWO

Knead dough together and split into two

STEP THREE

Return one of the pieces back to the mixer and add in the cocoa

STEP FOUR

On pieces of wax paper, roll the two doughs out to near equal sizes and shapes

STEP FIVE

Lightly spread the egg mixture onto the top of one of the two doughs (this will help the two doughs stick together)

STEP SIX

Stack the other dough directly on top of the egged dough, trying to match the placement up as best as possible (it is easiest to keep the wax paper on as you flip the second dough on top of the first one)

STEP SEVEN

Press the edges down along the outside of the doughs to connect the two doughs

STEP EIGHT

Using the wax paper that is under the bottom dough, roll the dough from the long way into a tight cylinder; seal the ends by pushing the tips inward as you create the cylinder

STEP NINE

Wrap tightly and place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes

STEP TEN

Preheat oven to 325 F; cut rolls into 1/4 inch slices and bake 14-16 minutes

*This makes so many cookies - before slicing all of the dough, I cut it in half and froze the remaining dough for next time. 

Hope you try it out!

Gummy Bear Sticks

I made these candy sticks - Gummy Bear Sticks - over the weekend with Thanksgiving in mind.

They are so cute. After I made them I realized that they reminded me of the multi-coloured corn that comes around during Thanksgiving - this stuff:

The Gummy Bear Sticks were really easy to make. 

Per stick, all you will need is:

1 1/2 dozen candy pieces - I used real fruit gummy bears

A stick with a point - You could buy these at the craft store, but I just used shish kabob skewers that I had in my kitchen

A bag to cover the stick - These are from the craft store and were packaged for pretzels but they worked perfect for this

Something to tie it all together - I was looking for twine in my wrapping paper box but didn't have any but untwisted the handle of a paper Levi's bag instead

I originally wanted to stack the gummy bears vertically but once it was pricked, the sticky part was exposed and it made it difficult to slide down. So I opted to put them on vertically and it made it less of a challenge and I think probably looks better then up and down.