I LOVE Christmas!!

Merry Christmas Eve! Christmas has to be my favorite holiday :) I just love being able to relax, spend time with family and bake holiday goodies!  This year I made a huge variety of treats for my office, my parents, and my in-laws :) I experimented with new recipes I found on other blogs, allrecipies.com, and of course Martha Stewart.  I think everything came out WONDERFUL and DELICIOUS!! I didnt get to eat a lot of it, maybe 1 or 2 pieces of each thing to make sure im not giving away awful tasting stuff.. i may just need to make extra batches next time! Here's a rundown of what I made and links to the recipes i used! 

For the moms, I decided to make 3 kinds of fudge and a box of chocolate candies/truffles. First I made a batch of peppermint fudge.  This one had to be my favorite out of the 3, I just love peppermint!  I also cut the fudge using christmas cookie cutters to be even more festive :) Next I made a batch of Kahlua Fudge, the coffee flavor was intense! my mother is going to looove it! And for the third batch, I made Rocky Road Fudge. The Rocky Road Fudge was too chunky to cut with the cookie cutters, so I just cut them into squares.  I placed each piece of fudge on a small sheet of parchment paper, and placed them carefully in a cute tin I got at michaels.

Peppermint Fudge

my cute fudge cut outs!

cooling the Kahlua Fudge

all three kinds of fudge arranged in cute christmas tins

I decided fudge just wasnt enough, so we also made TRUFFLES! I made truffles for my mom's birthday last year and she loved them!  I decided to try a different recipe this time, and they turned out ok.  Less work than the previous ones, and just as yummy!  you reaaally need to be a chocolate lover to enjoy truffles.  these were just too rich for me.  after cooling the ganache in the fridge for about an hour, it was time to cover them! I made 4 different types: peanut, candy cane, coco powder, and powdered sugar.  You just roll up the ganache in your hands (quickly! or else the heat from your hands will melt it too much) and roll it around in the toppings.  I really had to press the candy cane and peanut bits into the chocolate.  they turned out beautifully.  my mother-in-law thought i BOUGHT the chocolates and was shocked when i told her i had made them! I arranged all the candy bits into a box i got at a local baking supply store.  

using the deadhead to smash up the peanuts. 

coating the truffle balls!

Candies in their boxes! I cut the phrase out using the Winter Frolic cartridge on my Cricut to dress the box up a bit.  The candies on the left of the box are made using Wilton Candy Melts and Molds!

For the dads, Paul picked out a super stacked snowman tin at Michaels.  Since it had 3 compartments, we decided to fill the bottom 2 with cookies and the top one with pieces of fudge leftover from the mom's gift :) For the bottom tier, we made a batch of Peppermint Bark Cookies a recipe that I got from My Pink Stamper craft blog that I follow.  I made these cookies earlier in the week to give away as gifts to co-workers and they were a HUGE hit! I still had all the ingredients for the cookies, so we made another batch (and this time, we had cookies leftover for US to enjoy!).  We decided to make Hershey Kiss Peanut Butter Cookies for the 2nd tier.  The recipe can be found on the back of any bag of Hershey Kisses.

Breaking up peppermint bark pieces with a deadhead.  I could have used a food processor i guess, but this way means less dishes! 

cookies are in  the oven!!

PERFECT looking cookies! 

check out the super cute snowman tin! 

 FINALLY! some goodies for US to enjoy :)  I decided that it would be our new christmas tradition, to bake and decorate christmas cookies on christmas eve!  This was super fun, paul and i had a good laugh at each other's "creations".  Initially, I made the decorating frosting but it was just too much work and too much swearing at the mixer involved!  I ended up using Wilton Candy Melts instead... We had tons of fun making these, which is the whole point anyways! dont laugh too hard at our cookies...

    

    

I've had SO MUCH FUN baking the past 2 days! People wonder how im not morbidly obese because I love baking and I bake so often... the secret is giving away 95% of your treats!  I love giving homemade goodies to others.  I love seeing them smile! These gifts are definitely not as fancy as anything you could buy at the store... or as cool as something you could buy for them at the mall... but homemade gifts, made from the heart have so much more meaning to them.

Whew! that was a LONG post! i hope i didnt bore people too much... Im still experimenting with this whole blogging thing, but I like it so far!  I look forward to blogging about my crafting/baking adventures, there will be lots of them!