Happy Holidays!

Sorry for my absence from the blog world for several days. I felt like I was on my death bed on Christmas Eve and Christmas, slipping in and out of consciousness for family obligations between doses of Dayquil and hydrocodone.

The good news is I don't have strep throat, and I'm finally back up to full speed! The bad news (or maybe it is good news too) is I won't have time for any new posts because one of my best friends is getting married tomorrow so I'm going to be going nonstop the next two days.

I'm also trying this new thing called spontaneity and hitching a ride down to Dallas with my friend Brian for a few days of NYE celebrations. So until my life returns to normal (and I go back to work wah wah), cheers to making 2013 the best year ever friends!

Holiday Baking Extravaganza

A bit delayed (crazy week at work), but on Sunday my friend Alex and I had a baking extravaganza! Nothing like a solid 5 hours of baking to make you forget your recent break-up. Seamus who? We were machines! Not gonna lie, after Sunday even I was sick of baking. Hard to believe, I know. 

On the menu were Cherry Almond Ornament Cookies, Chocolaty Caramel Thumbprints, Christmas Tree Rice Krispie Treats, and more sugar cookies.

Doesn't she look just like Little Suzy Homemaker in her pearls and apron??  Too cute! Also,
notice the ENORMOUS plate of sugar cookies that we had to frost. Luckily, we enlisted
the help of Alex's amazing husband, Nathan so we weren't decorating well into the night!

Since I didn't help much with the cherry almond ornament cookies I will try to convince Alex to post a how-to on her blog over at Allie Inbetween. Seeing as I've already devoted an entire post to sugar cookies and royal frosting, and I'm pretty sure everyone can handle rice krispie treats, lets focus on the chocolaty caramel thumbprints. These things were divine. 

Chocolaty Caramel Thumbprints

1 egg
1/2 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
2 T milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
16 vanilla caramels, unwrapped
3 T whipping cream
1 1/4 cup finely chopped pecans
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate pieces
1 tsp shortening

Alex and I came across the recipe on Better Homes & Garden's All-Time Favorite Christmas Cookies list. The recipe looked a bit intimidating since there were several different steps, but it was actually relatively simple.

Making the dough was pretty self-explanatory. I would caution the recipe advised chilling the dough for at least two hours before rolling into balls, coating in egg whites, and covering with chopped pecans. You know how impatient I am so clearly I didn't follow the instructions. Hey I had a birthday dinner to get to!  If you decide to make these I highly suggest following the instructions and chilling for at least two hours because my hands were covered in gooey chocolate dough by the time I was done. The recipe said it would make 36 cookies, but I definitely only ended up with around 26. I'm not sure if this was due to me making abnormally large cookies (I swear they were 1 inch) or because half the dough ended up on my hands. Either way, if you actually need 36 cookies I suggest doubling the recipe.

Also, because the dough is coated in egg whites, even after baking, the dough will still appear glossy and may look a little gooey/raw. To avoid overcooking, gently tap the edges of the cookies when they come out of the oven, and if they feel firm they are probably done. My thumbprints puffed up slightly when they were baked so I used the back of a tablespoon to make deeper indentations before spooning the melted caramel into the center of the cookies.

Alex and I were a bit pressed for time so instead of heating the chocolate in a saucepan over low heat we cheated a little and used the microwave. I despise heating chocolate anyways because it seems like I always end up burning it.

I'm pretty sure I could have eaten all of these by myself. Yum!

I absolutely loved these cookies, and they look so fancy. I will most certainly be adding them to my holiday go-to recipes in future years. What are some of your favorite holiday cookie recipes?

soirees & sweaters & sweets, oh deer!

I love dressing up, and I love Christmas so it is only natural that I love tacky sweater parties. Lucky for me, I have a couple already planned this season. The first of which is tomorrow afternoon at work. Over the top sweaters. An awkward family photo booth with props. Oh, and did I mention that everyone has to bring their favorite holiday treat?!? I. Can't. Wait.

By now everyone at work is pretty familiar with my baking obsession. I dare say I've set the bar pretty high with some of my past creations for our various treat days so the pressure was really on for me to find something fantastic to make for tomorrow. 

Pumpkin cupcakes for my manager's birthday. Oreo football truffles for a co-worker's
birthday. Watermelon cake balls for our summer barbecue. Oreo cupcakes for Boss's Day.

I'd been perusing Pinterest trying to keep my eye out for cute holiday themed treats, but I just couldn't get over the adorable reindeer cupcakes that I made for a cookie exchange last year. Never one to rest on my laurels, I decided to change them up a bit for the party tomorrow. I didn't have an abundance of time on my hands this evening so I used a boxed chocolate cake mix and store-bought chocolate frosting. Oh the horror! However, if you are feeling like Little Miss Martha Stewart and want to try making these cupcakes from scratch here is my favorite chocolate cake recipe of all time. So good! Seriously people will be knocking down your door for this recipe!

Ready to rock!

After the cupcakes had cooled I started by applying a thin layer of chocolate frosting.

The frosting doesn't have to be perfect since a majority of the cupcake will be covered by a vanilla wafer.

Next add a vanilla wafer and the reindeer's eyes. Last year when I made these cupcakes I used white m&ms as eyes and then added a dot of black frosting for the pupil. This was a little tricky to say the least. Luckily this October when I was killing some time in the seasonal section of Target (my fave!) I came across an amazing invention. Seriously life altering people.

Don't fret! It seems these babies are sold year-round. I saw them at Wal-mart earlier
tonight, and I imagine you can also find them at Hobby Lobby or Michael's as well.

I seriously think these candy eyeballs take the difficulty level of these
cupcakes from a 5-7 down to a 3. Ahhh-mazing!

Now it was time to give the little guy a nose and some ears. I used both brown and red m&ms for the nose (obviously you need some Rudolph's thrown into the mix duh) and Milk Duds for the ears. To get the nose to stick, add a dab of frosting to the side of the m&m with the 'm' on it and press lightly to the vanilla wafer. The Milk Duds were a wee bit trickier. When I started to decorate the first cupcake I just stuck the Milk Duds into the frosting as is, but my reindeer totally looked more like a bear than a deer. FAIL.

Definitely not seeing a deer here. 

Since this approach was clearly not going to work, I decided to try squishing the Milk Duds a little bit at the top to make them more pointed. I definitely think the next cupcake turned out more deer-like. Just make sure you don't mold the Milk Duds for too long, or they will start to melt. 

These might be a little too pointy, but certainly an improvement over the bear!

By far the hardest part of these cupcakes was getting the pretzels to break in appropriate "antler-like" fashion. I wasted a lot of pretzels tonight, but I can assure you my dogs are going to bed with full bellies! ;) 

Yikes!

I guess the beauty in making antlers is they are all different so there really isn't a right way to make them.

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3, 4, 5....you get the point.

If you don't want to go to war with the pretzels then I would suggest using the smaller sized pretzels like I used last year. 

Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

I think these cupcakes turn out adorable either way! Hopefully they are a hit at the party tomorrow! 

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

If you know me then you are well aware of the fact that I have a slight obsession with Christmas (and really just the holiday time frame in general). "All I Want for Christmas is You" along with a plethora of other Christmas carols can be heard blasting in my car, my cube at work, and my apartment beginning on November 1st. You can never start too early. Sorry Thanksgiving!  I apologize in advance for the absurd amount of holiday tradition, cooking, and crafting entries that I will undoubtedly post in the coming weeks, but without further ado my first holiday tradition is...

GINGERBREAD HOUSE DECORATING

Every Thanksgiving weekend, my sisters and I decorate a gingerbread house together. When I say my sisters, what this really means is Brooke and I decorate while Mandy pretends to help (she doesn't share the same enthusiasm that Brooke and I do for baking). The past couple years my mom has gotten us a Mini Gingerbread Village kit so we each assembled and decorated our own separate houses (which means dearest Mandy was forced to participate).

Gingerbread House Decorating 2011 - Can you guess which one Mandy made?
(I apologize for the awful picture quality)

This year my mom bought a Pre-Baked and Pre-Assembled Gingerbread House kit which I feel like was cheating slightly . The most challenging part of a gingerbread house is putting it together. It seems like we never get through a year without having at least one massive collapse (usually after we've decorated a good portion of it). Anyways, this year we got to avoid all that and just focus on making it pretty!

This kit came with the pre-assembled house, candy stars, candy canes, gumdrops, and gummy trees. We had some red, green, and white regular and mint m&ms at the house so we threw those into the mix as well.

Usually Brooke and I like to get creative and try to decorate with some other items not included in the kit. This year the selection at our house was pretty slim, but we did have some chocolate chip cookies my grandma had baked, dry roasted peanuts, and the m&ms pictured above. I also stumbled upon some adorable little gingerbread men on Black Friday at Target. If you like decorating, you can find some really awesome seasonal Wilton products in the holiday section there.

Obsessed. These have to be the cutest thing ever.

Mandy conveniently had physics homework to work on (who does homework over Thanksgiving break!?!? Such an overachiever!) so Brooke and I were on our own tackling this house. We decided to make a classy gingerbread house this year so we didn't go overboard with candy and used only a red/white/green color scheme. We used the peanuts for stonework if you will, and crumbled a cookie for the path to the front door. We also used some white sanding sugar to cover the frosting on the cardboard base to make it look more like snow.

Definitely an improvement over last year!

Considering what we had to work with, I think it turned out pretty cute! Maybe next year we will be more adventurous and try assembling one from scratch! If anyone else has any pictures of gingerbread houses they've decorated I would love to see them! Now what to do with my remaining 10 little gingerbread men...