Our Christmas in pictures (and words)
So, what happened then is that Kitchen Scrapbook ended up totally missing Christmas! I was living the moment, er, moments, surrounded by family and making food and snacks without blogging about it.
You know how when you get a whole bunch of Christmas cards in a row, 4 one day and 5 the next, and then it tapers off towards the end of December and then no more cards and then the 2nd week of January, you get another Christmas card? Well, that’s how this post is… the other blogs you read have posted Christmas now and are switching from red & green colors to January blue and New Year’s resolutions, but here, we’re pulling you back to Christmas…
First, we have Pretzel Turtles
I got this idea from Judy on a message board that I frequent. Take small pretzels and put a Rolo candy on top of each one. Then, put them in the oven for a couple minutes at 350. When you get them out, immediately press a pecan half on top of each Rolo. Yum! They went over very well here!
We also had monster cookies, party mix, and gingerbreadmen:
Lexi said, “Mom, look! I made twins!”…
Hmmm, someone samples cookies as she decorates…
And then onto our Christmas meal…
Here was our menu:
–Mashed potatoes and gravy
–Ham, rotisserie on the grill
–Noodles
–Baked corn
–Candied sweet potatoes
–Corn chip salad
–Rolls
–Jellied cranberry sauce
–Pies (pumpkin, lemon meringue, and peanut butter)
This is my husband, making some awesome ham…
Missed the pies before they were eaten…
Pictured in the picture right under the ham collage is the candied sweet potatoes. I was trying to make a knock-off of Texas Roadhouse’s loaded sweet potato. I baked 3 sweet potatoes, peeled them and put them in an 8×8 pan and mashed them with a fork. Then, melted a stick of butter and stirred in some cinnamon and about 1/2 cup of brown sugar, poured it over the potatoes, put a layer of marshmallows on top, then baked it at 350 until the marshmallows were browned. It was GOOD!!!
In addition to food, our Christmas consisted of gift opening, football throwing, baby holding, and much more…
Chex Party Mix
I love party mix! For me, it is another ‘must’ for the holiday season! As much as I like it, I oughta make it year-round. It freezes well, so I could make a big batch and get a small bag out of the freezer as needed. Do any of you do that? Or is it more of just a holiday snack for you, too?
One thing about party mix is that is so variation-friendly. You can replace some of the Chex for other unsweetened cereal, you can use mixed nuts or peanuts, you can use different shapes of pretzels, and then the cracker part can be any kind of small cracker, cheesy crackers, bagel chips, or whatever. I don’t think I’ve ever made it the same twice.
I do use a recipe to get the total amount of cups about right for the amount of sauce, then follow the sauce recipe exactly. And where this recipe comes from is… the back of the Chex cereal box, but I bake it instead of microwave it.
The Original Chex Party Mix
3 cups Corn Chex cereal
3 cups Rice Chex cereal
3 cups Wheat Chex cereal
1 cup mixed nuts
1 cup bite-sized pretzels
1 cup garlic-flavor bite-sized bagel chips or regular-size bagel chips, broken into 1″ pieces (I used Cheezits)
Or about 12 cups of any combo of the type of things listed above
6 Tbsp. butter or margarine
2 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 tsp. seasoned salt
3/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. onion powder
In a large bowl, mix cereals, nuts, pretzels, and bagel chips; set aside. In small microwavable bowl, microwave butter uncovered on High about 40 seconds or until melted. Stir in seasonings.
Pour over cereal mixture; stir until evenly coated.
Microwave uncovered on High 5 - 6 min, thoroughly stirring every 2 minutes OR spread mixture out onto baking sheets and bake at 250 for 1 hour, stirring every 10-15 minutes.
Spread on paper towels to cool.
Store in airtight container.
So… what all do you put in your party mix? My sister, Jan, is looking for new ideas too. We just talked about it a couple days ago. And neither of us gave each other any good inspirations.
‘Tis the Season… bake some festive Meringue Candy Canes!
Mostly when we talk about food, we think of taste. Well, not this time… the strong point of these candy canes is the looks, not the taste. Aren’t they pretty? I think they’d technically be called a candy… they have no substances like a cookie does. Speaking of substance, they might even be calorie-free because when you take a bite of one, within seconds, that bite dissolves into nothing inside your mouth, so the calories must dissolve into nothing too, right? 
Lexi says they taste like dried out frosting.
They were fun to make… you get to make swirls with a decorating bag. I actually did something I’ve never done before in featuring cooking and took a video. It’s a very poor video, but my standards have gone from no videos to poor videos, so gradually, I’ll up my standards to good videos. Part of the problem may be that my lighting was bad or that I saved it in low resolution or that I was piping the meringue with one hand while holding the camera and videoing with the other hand. Not a good idea. Live and learn.
By the way, if someone would just out of the blue ask you, “How do you spell meringue?”, could you spell it? It has gotta be one of the weirdest-spelled words in the English language!
Meringue Candy Canes …from the Taste of Home Christmas Cookies and Candies cookbook
3 egg whites
1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. peppermint extract
Red paste food coloring
In a mixing bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Add cream of tartar; beat on medium speed until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar, 1 Tablespoon at a time, beating on High until stiff peaks form and sugar is dissolved, about 6 minutes. Beat in peppermint extract.
Cut a small hole in the corner of a pastry bag; insert star tip #21. On the inside of the bag, brush 3 evenly spaced 1/4″ strips of red food coloring from the tip to 3/4 of the way to the top of the bag. Carefully fill bag with meringue. Pipe 3″ candy canes onto parchment-lined baking sheets. I didn’t have parchment paper, so I used tin foil. Worked great and they didn’t stick to it.
And now for the video:
See the difference in redness here in these 2 panfuls? The top ones on the left were made first. I guess the food coloring got less concentrated as the meringue slid past.
Bake at 225 for 25 min; rotate baking sheets to a different oven rack. Bake 25 min longer or until firm to the touch. Turn oven off; leave canes in oven with door ajar for at least 1 hour or until cool. Yield: 4 dozen. I must’ve made them bigger because I got only about 2 1/2 dozen, but I did use the #21 tip.
Put these festive candy canes on an assorted cookie plate for your mailman this Christmas! Or take a plate to your local fire dept. Or to your neighbors. Or eat all your Christmas cookies yourself.
Christmas Cookie Exchange 2008
So, now I have several dozen cookies around here. Good-bye, diet… see ya in January.
Actually, I’m going to put them in the freezer till Christmas when a bunch of family is coming. *Ahem*But those monster cookies might not make it to the freezer. I made peppermint-flavored Candy Cane cookies, which are not pictured above. But here is a progress picture of them in the making:
And here is where they are featured when I made them another year: Candy Cane cookies. They turned out better this year, not quite so fat, and a bit more evenly twisted.
So, we are now in the Holiday season! There’s excitement in the air, and snow flurries outside, and Christmas music playing, and candles burning, and love all around. And gingerbread-cookie-making with Lexi and Tiffany… but ‘today’ never seems like the right time to do that. ‘Tomorrow’ always seems like a better day to do it. Actually, it’s fun, just quite a mess!
Pumpkin Cookies
I’ve made these twice now… both times they were inhaled in a short amount of time. They are great with applesauce. Have you ever tried cookies with applesauce? I hadn’t until my husband introduced me to that combo after we were married. The girls LOVE the frosting. When I saw that these cookies take caramel frosting, I thought ‘No way. It’s gotta be cream cheese frosting’, but I decided to try them with caramel frosting after all and it turned out to be a good decision.
By the way, it’s nearly Thanksgiving… are you cooking a Thanksgiving dinner at your house? I’m not. We’re going away for dinner. I’m just planning to bring something to go with the meal, like a salad. I just went to put a link to the post with the recipe of one of my favorite salads and realized I have not featured it yet! It’s the Robust Italian Salad pictured on this post. It’s SO good and you DO need to have the recipe, so be looking for it within the next week or so! It’s got homemade croutons, and just before serving, you toss it with Italian dressing. I’m also planning to make a pumpkin pie this week. I want to try a Custard Pumpkin Pie from a ‘blank’ cookbook that my grandma hand-wrote recipes in for me. This pumpkin pie recipe was given to her from my great grandma. Mixing my nostalgia with my cookbook collection, a couple of the cookbooks I own are PRICELESS. The pumpin pie recipe is in this cookbook next to the Brown Sugar Pie, which is also passed down from my great grandma. Mmmm, just seeing that brown sugar pie again makes me hungry for it!
Ok, back to the pumpkin cookies with caramel frosting…
I got this recipe from my friend Freida… This recipe is 1 cup of this and 1 tsp. of that for most of the ingredients… if you ever want to memorize recipes, this would be a good one! Is there any recipe that you make so much that you’ve got memorized (I don’t mean made-up stuff, like you dump-and-bake cooks do )? From age about 12-17, it was pancakes for me. Not sure if I was the chief pancake-maker or what, but I knew the recipe. Now, it’s Raspberry Cream Cheese Cinnamon Rolls and Red Lobster Biscuits and maybe a couple others, but that’s all I can think of right now.
Pumpkin Cookies
1 cup Crisco
1 cup sugar
1 cup pumpkin
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
Cream shortening and sugar. Add pumpkin, egg, and vanilla. Blend in dry ingredients.
Bake at 350 for 15 minutes. (Freida said, “I only baked them for about 12 minutes and they were perfect.” And now I add, “Me too.”) Spread caramel frosting on top. Also good with cream cheese frosting.
Caramel Frosting
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
Combine brown sugar, butter and milk and bring to a boil over medium heat. Cook and stir for 2 minutes.
Remove from the heat and stir in vanilla. Cool to lukewarm, then gradually beat in the powdered sugar until frosting reaches spreading consistency.
The more powdered sugar you add, the faster it will harden. I made the frosting while the first batch of cookies was in the oven. It took forever to cool to lukewarm… next time, I’ll either make the frosting ahead of time or make the cookies while the girls aren’t around! “Mom, is the frosting ready yet?… 20 seconds later… “Is it ready now?”… 
My mom gave us some little leaf sprinkles, so we used them on the cookies for a bit of garnishing. We (er, they) sprinkled them on right away before the frosting hardened.
Lexi was explaining this picture to someone and here’s what she said, “We were sprinkling sprinkles on pumpkin cookies with delicious frosting. At first, I sprinkled a little bit so I needed more and then Tiffany came and she wanted to sprinkle some on too. At first she was sprinkling on too many sprinkles, but then she got better at it. And then she patted it down and got her hands all messy.” Yup. That’s pretty much how it went.
About Me
Hi! Welcome to my kitchen! My name is Kay. I'm from central Ohio. I love cooking and baking. Especially baking. It's thereapeudic for me. I'm not a professional or gourmet cook by any means. I'm a Christian homemaker who happens to take pictures of some of the food I make. I have 2 little 'helpers'... Lexi (7) and Tiffany (3), who are young cooks in training. I don't do anything on the grill... that's where my husband Shannon comes in! He grills quite a bit, especially in the summer. So, sit back and enjoy browsing thro' the recipes. If you try some of them, I'd love to hear feedback on how you liked them! If you want to contact me, my email address is kaylouann@gmail.com
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