Christmas Baking

A couple weekends ago Magnolia and I spent an afternoon baking for teachers, neighbors and of course ourselves.  Dan kept Boothe in the living room and Magnolia was such a great help measuring and pouring and unwrapping candy canes and putting them in the food processor to grind up.  Here are the treats we made along with a link to the recipe.

These cornflake wreaths are easy to make but hard to handle.  They are so sticky and are trouble when you are trying to shape them with your fingers.  I used an ice cream scoop (greased) to make balls and then just pressed a thumb in the middle to make the wreath shape.  I could only handle making 1 batch of a dozen of these.

These buckeye pretzels were very easy to make.  I rolled little balls of the peanut butter mixture and Magnolia squished it between the 2 pretzels. A few ingredients and I simplified the recipe even more by using chocolate covered pretzels instead of melting chocolate and dipping them.  I made about 5 dozen using a single batch of this recipe.

We love fudge around the holidays so I decided to try peppermint fudge this year.  This was the favorite treat of Magnolia and Boothe that we made that day.  Dan preferred the buckeyes.  This fudge is so pretty looking too and added some nice color to the treat bags we put together.  This recipe makes 36 pieces but is very rich so I got about 45 peices.

And last but definitely not least, my favorite, these soft gingerbread cookies are awesome.  I may have to make these again before the end of the year.  I got about 4 dozen from this recipe.

I found all of these recipes via Pinterest.  Such a good way to find new recipes.  Most of mine happen to be sweets!  Here are 2 others I tried over the past month that are worth trying and making again.

New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookies

and

Chocolate Coconut Bars