Christmas Cookies / Traditional Foods You Cherish

[Scent of Cedar *]

We are getting ready to bake and mail Christmas cookies. To that end, I began checking out recipes and decorating tips and lighting schemes, and have passed a very nice hour just checking online and anticipating the traditional things that mean Christmas. When you have mailed cookies or Christmas care packages, which were the cookies or the items most appreciated? I am trying to think of things which will survive the mailing.

And I am wondering too, about packing. I think we've used popcorn in the past, but I am going to try something different this year.

Are there special places from which you order things for Christmas?

Cedar

 

[InsaneCdn]

For "shipping"... (whatever reason):
- heavy cakes - fruit cake, pound cakes, zucchini bread, etc.
- old-fashioned cookies - peanut butter, oatmeal raisin, etc.
- squares - brownies and such.

Don't try sending sugar cookies or shortbread... too delicate.

 

[dstc_99]

If it's not hot. I love to send chocolate covered pretzels, nuts, and peppermint bark.

 

[JKF]

Yum dstc! I'm obsessed with chocolate covered pretzels. They are my ultimate favorite snack. I only allow myself 6 mini ones after dinner but I would eat them by the handful if could! lol

 

[dstc_99]

They are so easy to make. husband just loves them.

 

[Nomad]

Need cookie recipe (see below)...

I make a rum cake. difficult child and my family really likes it. difficult child has a winter birthday and I made it for her. She seemed appreciative, but then right after that, she was grumpy. She is grumpy for all occasions. xmas is often one of the worst and I am a bit nervous about this as I've had a very xxxxx year health wise and am not willing to tolerate much of that sort of thing.

I digress. HELP! I was invited to a xmas party and I need to bring xmas cookies. Well, I haven't done xmas cookies in a few decades. I don't have any recipes. If I want to make cookies...I buy those Pillsbury choc. chip ones...which are awesome. For xmas, I suppose I should make something homemade.

Does anyone have a good recipe for a xmas cookie that preferably has at least some chocolate in it? (lots of chocolate lovers in the crowd). Thank you.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Yes!

These are the cutest, tastiest Christmas "cookies" ever.

Christmas Mice

For two dozen:

24 marachino cherries with stems
12 oz pkg semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips, melted
24 Hershey's kisses
small package slivered almonds
48 of those hard, red, cinnamon candies used in baking

1) Assemble ingredients:

Gently choose and place 24 cherries in a strainer. Keep them nice and round and plump. Don't force them to drain.

Unwrap and place Hershey's kisses in separate bowl.

Place 48 slivered almonds and 48 cinnamon candies in separate bowls.

2) Line a baking pan or cookie sheet with aluminum foil.

3) Melt chocolate chips in microwave per package directions.

4) Assembly:

Body and tail:

Dip each marrachino cherry into melted chocolate to coat. Set onto foil. Leave room around each cherry for the rest of the mouse we are making.
If the stem isn't completely covered, that will be alright. Try to place the chocolate covered cherries with the "tail" (the stem) curling up.

Head:

Glue the flat bottom of the unwrapped Hershey's kiss into place with dab of melted chocolate. (The pointed end of the Kiss will be the mouse nose.)

Using a toothpick and more melted chocolate, glue on two slivered almond "ears" between the body of the mouse and his Hershey's kiss head.

Using a toothpick, place dab of melted chocolate where the eyes of the mouse will go on the Hershey's kiss. Place two red cinnamon "eyes."

Refrigerate. When mice are solidly glued together, carefully place into a covered container. Store in refrigerator for up to one week.

***

These are delicious, and so cute placed around a fudge tray, or a tray of Brownies or Christmas cookies.

For variety, white chocolate can be used, along with white Hershey's kisses.

I think the guests at your party will love them.

:O)

Cedar

.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

One of my granddaughters makes these. Truly sinfully delicious and probably terribly bad for us.

This is hilarious. Stick with it. He does get to the recipe part.

:O)

Cedar

 

[donna723]

I used to make these peanut butter/chocolate cookies every year and the kids loved them. Can't make them anymore since my grandson has a severe peanut allergy. It's a sandwich cookie made of two peanut butter cookies with a melted peanut butter cup candy in the middle. Use any standard peanut butter cookie recipe. I use the one on the butter flavor Crisco package because they stay soft. Make one cookie sheet of cookies as usual, remove from the pan and let them cool. These are the "lids". Put another batch in to bake. Two minutes before the end of the baking time take them out of the oven and very carefully turn each one over with a spatula. Top each one with the small size Reeses peanut butter cup candies. Then put them back in the oven for that last two minutes. Take them out of the oven and immediately top each one with one of the cooled "lids", gently pressing and turning to smoosh the chocolate out to the edges. These are unbelievably good and totally addictive!

 

[Nomad]

Thank u guys!!! Ok, now I see why people love homemade Xmas cookies as my mouth is watering after reading these. What kind of chocolate do you use to dip the Oreo balls in? I really like all of these...yuuuuummmmmoooooo

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Good quality chocolate chips can be used, or the meltable candy squares created especially for coating candy. (The kind you use when making almond barque or coating pretzels.)

Which I love.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I had homemade peanut brittle, yesterday. The lady made it with her sister and her granddaughters, using her grandmother's handwritten recipe. She added not only baking soda at the end, but baking soda and vinegar.

It was delicious.

The vinegar interacts with the soda just before it hits the steaming sugar mixture, and so the peanut brittle was just soft enough.

She is going to share that recipe with me, and teach me just how to do it, next year.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

She seemed appreciative, but then right after that, she was grumpy. She is grumpy for all occasions.

Maybe it's the sugar? I feel very sleepy when I have too much sugar.

Cedar

 

[AnnieO]

I made gingerbread cookie dough last night, and also cheesecake. My very favorite though is my grandma's fruitcake... It's basically an applesauce cake with fruit and soaked in rum. MMMMM.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Yum.

I am imagining how wonderful it must be to walk in to your kitchen when you are baking.

I love it that the recipe is your grandmother's.

You know what? I was just thinking how sad it is that I don't have a recipe from my grandmother but...MY GRANDMA WAS A TERRIBLE COOK!!!

Ha! She was always burning things or not cooking them enough or forgetting she'd already salted something and doing it once or twice more.

:O)

But she made us the best hot cocoa from scratch.
The kind you make with Hershey's dark chocolate and add your own sugar?

She had a dairy farm, and so the milk was morning fresh and thick with cream.

Cedar

 

[InsaneCdn]

too bad you don't have the recipe for that hot cocoa...

My grandma was a good cook - until she got older. I never liked her cooking much, but I sure loved her recipes...

 

[donna723]

Cedar, I hate to admit it but my mother was a terrible cook too. Everything she made was bland, tasteless, dried out and/or burnt. My grandmother was not a good cook either so she really had no one to learn from. And my mom came up during the Depression so she learned to skimp on everything. Cake frostings came out like concrete because she'd only use a tiny dab of butter. And we never had anything she didn't like so we never tasted a lot of things like onions, broccoli or mushrooms till we weremuch older. I evolved in to a pretty darned good cook but it's because I learned on my own later by experimenting and trying new things. My daughter recently told me that she so wished they could have come here for Thanksgiving dinner!! She said she always remembered how good they were! And it just blew me away to realize that I am a part of HER nostalgia!

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

We found the most incredible sites for baklava, and for Italian cookies and pastries:

http://www.baklava.com/

Cedar

 

[InsaneCdn]

Cake frostings came out like concrete because she'd only use a tiny dab of butter

This is funny... my granny used to make a really good "depression-era frosting"... lemons were cheap, butter was expensive. She'd take the zest and juice of one lemon, and add enough powdered sugar to make whatever consistency she wanted (filling between layers, glaze, icing, etc.) It was "cheap" and actually tasted good.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

My father would make raw onion and mustard sandwiches on white bread. Cheap, and TASTED REALLY BAD.

He would tell us stories of being very poor as a boy, and told us that is where he learned to eat those onion sandwiches.

Our generation has been more fortunate than we know.

Cedar