Sunday, January 1, 2012

Christmas 2011 - The Cooking Extravaganza!

First of all... HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

It's my family's tradition to make holiday cookie boxes for all our friends and those who help us on the day to day, week to week or month to month...

My grandma started them with my mom, my mom continued with me, and now I am handing the tradition to my daughter.

This year of course Pinterest had a HUUUUGE factor in the goodies we decided to make in our packages.  My pics of each as well as links to the original bloggers are all provided.  I will say their pics are going to be WAAAY better than mine... but at least you can see what it will look like not stylized... :)

So first I made a list of all the "stuff" we were going to need to make the goodies.  Here's the arsenal:



So the first one we tackled was the pretzel and kisses and M&M's. Totally repinned over and over and over again.... and like 7 different varieties... Here's the blog we pulled ours off of:  House on Hilltop

We went the easy route and I wasn't able to find circle pretzels:



I think in total this one took us 10 minutes to complete and in all honesty...I've made it a few more times since this initial batch...  It was SUPER yummy to take into the movie theater and an easy snack for new years.

Next we made an english toffee that was not a pinterest item, but one that was given to me by my friends grandmother.  Super easy recipe -

2 Sticks of butter
1 cup of Sugar
2 Hershey Bars
Chopped nuts of your choice

Consistently stir butter and sugar about 10 minutes until its a caramel color - over medium high heat.

On a cookie sheet spray non stick spray (I do this even on my non stick pans) sprinkle 3/4's of your chopped nuts on the pan.  Once the butter and sugar has changed color, pour it over the chopped nuts on your pan. Melt hershey bars.  I do this on a double broiler, some people like to microwave... your choice.  Coat the toffee with the chocolate and sprinkle the remaining nuts. Let cool and crack into pieces!



Next up!  Christmas Crack.  Another repinned item I saw many times over.  We got ours from here: The Girl Who Ate Everything

Jasmine loved this one.  So easy!




Jasmine felt this looked too much like the english toffee we made, so she wanted to add some "Jazz":


That's it for now.  New post tomorrow with more competed foodie recipes! :)

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