Christmas Treats to Give and Eat - Part Two

In these weeks leading up to Christmas, I'm sharing some favorite holiday treats from the Obi house. Treats that are fun to share with your family, BUT will also bring joy to others. And this week we're continuing to keep things simple with Pretzel Turtles.

When I was growing up, Turtles were one of my favorite candies and every Christmas my Dad would buy a box for him, my mom and me to share. Now I can make my own to share with others.

Here's what you'll need:

• Pretzel Squares (if you can't find the squares, you can use the mini twists)
• Pecan halves
• Individually wrapped soft caramels, unwrapped (I use Werther's)
• Milk chocolate for melting (or dark, if you prefer)

Notice that I didn't give any amounts. That's because you can make as many or few as you like. Just be sure to have equal amounts of pretzels, pecan halves and caramels.

Lightly toast your pecan halves either in a skillet on the stove or it the oven. Roughly 4-6 minutes, just be sure to toss them a time or two and watch them so they don't burn. Once they're toasted, set them aside to cool.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

On a baking sheet lined with a silicone mat or parchment paper, lay out your pretzels and top each with a caramel.

Bake 3-5 minutes, until caramel is soft, but not oozing.

Immediately press a pecan half into each melted caramel.

While those are cooling, melt your chocolate. I put mine in a measuring cup then microwaved it in 30 second intervals, stirring between each, until smooth. You can also melt them on the stove top with a double boiler or nonstick pan over low heat.

Once the pecan-topped caramels are cool, remove them from the pan. Spoon a 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoon puddle of melted chocolate onto the silicone/parchment then carefully drop a pecan-topped pretzel into the middle like so.

Continue until all pretzels are nestled in chocolate.

Cool completely before serving.

These really are to-die-for. Dare I say, even better than the originals. They're sweet and salty chocolatey perfection.

For gift giving, simply place several in a festive tin or a cellophane bag tied with a pretty ribbon. Or simply serve them on a pretty plate. Trust me, your loved one(s) won't care once they bite into these delicious treats.

Will you be giving any gifts from your kitchen this year? If so, what's on your list?

Award-winning author Mindy Obenhaus is passionate about touching readers with Biblical truths in an entertaining, and sometimes adventurous, manner. She lives on a ranch in Texas with her husband, two sassy pups, countless cattle, deer and the occasional coyote, mountain lion or snake. When she's not writing, she enjoys spending time with her grandchildren, cooking and watching copious amounts of the Hallmark Channel. Learn more at mindyobenhaus.com

Christmas Goodies the easy way

I'm all for cooking from scratch. You know that, right?

But there are some Christmas goodies that are so good, I just have to take the easy way out.

Take these for instance:

I call them "Crunchy Turtles."

Ingredients:

Pretzels

Caramels

Ghiradelli Dark Melting Wafers

Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.

Line a cookie sheet with baking parchment and pre-heat your oven to 325°.

Build your crunchy turtle like this:

Pretzel

Two chocolate melting wafers

Another pretzel

A caramel

Put the baking sheet in your preheated oven for five minutes.

When you take them out, they'll be all melted together into caramel/chocolate goodness. With a crunch.

Some of the caramels slide off their perch, but that didn't
affect the taste!

When they're cool, melt more of the chocolate and drizzle it onto the turtles.

All right, my drizzling isn't very neat. If you have time, you can make it look very pretty. You could even sprinkle some freshly ground sea salt on top if you have a craving for salted caramel!

But I had a very limited time in my kitchen for these goodies. Michael and Kris had their own project and needed kitchen space.

I'm sure these have a name, but we'll just call them Rolo Pretzel Snacks.

Ingredients:

1 bag Rolo candies
1 bag Hershey Kisses
Pretzels

This recipe involves a lot of unwrapping.

And more unwrapping.

Once you've unwrapped the chocolate, it's time to build.

Once again, use a cookie sheet lined with baking parchment. Place your pretzels on the sheet, and place one Rolo candy on each pretzel.

Turn your oven on low broil, and put the cookie sheet in - just long enough to melt the candies.

After the candies are melted, remove the sheet from the oven and place a Hershey's Kiss on each Rolo, squishing the Rolo as you go. Let them cool, and you're all set!

So delicious!

But Michael and Kris weren't done yet! They had purchased a Gingerbread House kit from the store, and started building.

And here is their finished product:

Meanwhile, in another part of town, Josh and Carrie had purchased a similar kit and were building their own Gingerbread House while watching Die Hard. That's everyone's favorite Christmas movie, right?

So at our house, and I hope at yours, too, It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

Last week's tree from the Great Christmas Tree
Hunt, all dressed up.

To Die for Oreo Truffles - Kitchen Fail

Only nine more days until Christmas! Can you believe it? Seems this month has just whizzed by in a flurry. Makes me wish it would slow down or last longer. Obviously, I need to plan better next year.

As you may or may not know, we are a big Boy Scout family. This weekend we hosted the annual adult Christmas party for our troop. Everyone brought a dessert or hors d'oeuvre to share so there wasn't a lot I needed to do in the way of food. 

But there was one thing I wanted to make.

Oreo Truffles.

Oreos are one of those simple things in life that bring joy to so many. 

Like a recipe with only three ingredients. 

Yep, to make these Oreo Truffles all you need are 40 Oreos (I show a package of double-stuf ones here, but I decided to use the regular ones for fear that too much "stuf" would make the balls too soft), an 8 oz. package of cream cheese and some white chocolate or almond bark.

First, put your cookies into the bowl of a food processor. I broke mine in half, thinking it might be easier on the machine. Don't know why, but that's just how this blond brain works.

Now if you do not have a food processor, do not fear. Simply put the cookies into a large zip-top bag, then use a rolling pin or your hands to take out your frustrations.

I pulsed until the cookies looked like this...

Then added the cream cheese...

And let the machine do the rest of the work.

If you're crushing the cookies by hand, you'll want to have them pretty much pulverized before mixing in your cream cheese. Once you add the cream cheese, you can use an electric mixer, a spoon or even your hands.

For ease of grabbing the mixture to roll into balls, I transferred it to a bowl.

This is where things really get rolling. Literally. 

Grab enough cookie/cream cheese mixture to roll into 1-inch balls.

(Sorry, y'all, I got preoccupied and forgot to take pictures)

Lay the balls on waxed or parchment paper and continue until mixture is gone.

Melt your chocolate slowly over a double boiler then dip your balls.

For me, this is where the trouble started. The balls are pretty soft, though they did retain their shape on the paper. That is, until I dipped them.

Dipping didn't seem like viable option with the balls being so soft, so I would set a ball on the tines of a fork over the melted chocolate and drizzle the chocolate over them until they were coated. Then I'd tap the fork on the sides of the bowl to  get rid of the excess.

Here are a couple examples of what they should look like.

These are mine.

This is one of my worst fails ever. I tried every which way to coat them, including dipping, but to no avail. They still came out more flat than round and definitely not attractive.

The taste, though, was AMAZING!!!!!

Well, I decided that they were not fit to be served at the party, which was okay with everyone else in the house, because they loved them and by not serving them, the fam could eat them all.

So imagine my surprise when I glanced at the dessert table later that night and saw my Tupperware container of ugly Oreo Truffles sitting there.

Who? Why?

Seems my husband and son decided they were too good not to share.

And our guests devoured them!

Go figure.

 Now I need your help. What can I do next time to make dipping these a success?

I contemplated refrigerating them for a bit to make them firmer, but it said to refrigerate them for an hour AFTER they were dipped. 

On this project, I am at a loss. I want to make them again, but I also want them to look appealing, not like deflated snowballs.

So what are your thoughts?

Keeping the memories: Adapting the Baking and Candy Making Season

The first week of December is a biggie for a lot of folks. Now that Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are past, we can focus on what's really important: Christmas cookie and candy making.

My sister made the same candy as Mindy!

My sister Ann already sent out her Christmas cards and she's gotten a head start on the sweet treats too. She's the one who inherited our grandmother's knack for all things sweet. Nanny used to send us a big box of homemade cookies and candy that would arrive right before Thanksgiving. The goodies were stored in the cold garage until Mom's Open House. But we'd sneak a piece now and then.

Now, me?  I hang up Mom's Christmas apron:

Mom loved poinsettias.

Pull out Mom's recipe box:

And revisit all the old memories with Mom's and Nanny's original recipe cards.

But every year recreating those memories is a challenge because of my allergies to wheat and corn. This year I added financial concerns. Baking and candy making are not cheap ventures. I know so many other families who are in the same situation. This year I know folks who have gone vegan or vegetarian, have discovered their child has celiac disease or other allergies, who developed diabetes, or are unemployed. Whew!

I'm all about keeping stress low this holiday season.  So what to do when you are trying to recreate Christmas memories for family members with allergy, sugar or vegan concerns without breaking the bank?

1) Give thanks for that one recipe that you can eat or afford to make.  I looked at the picture of the recipe cards and, wow, there was one that didn't have wheat or corn and wasn't overly expensive, Forgotten Cookies. What a find! Bonus? It's a star on the Pinterest gluten free Christmas cookie lists. So a recipe that's been around for decades before folks talked gluten and celiac stays on my list. (Recipe at the end of this post.)

2) Think flavors, not recreating the exact recipe.  My other favorite recipes featured in the above picture are fruit cake cookies (expensive ingredients and allergy issues), Date Nut Roll cookies (wheat), and peanut butter roll candy (corn syrup). Cane syrup does not work the same way as corn syrup does. I don't like xanthan gums that lots of GF baking recipes use and it's not cheap. So I focused on the flavors: fruit and nut, dates and short bread, and peanut butter. Then I did what I do when I'm desperately in need of help and low on creativity, I headed to....

3) Pinterest, go to Pinterest! The mecca of all things helpful with food challenges. Thanks to www.finecooking.com, I could savor that date and shortbread combo. It wasn't a pinwheel cookie recipe but I found a date nut cookie substitute  .

Now for a corn syrup free substitute for Nanny's peanut butter candy roll . Thanks to Pinterest, I found the recipe on www.justapinch.com. I'll use confectioners sugar with tapioca rather than cornstarch.
   
Fruit cake cookies? I started looking, got distracted by Christmas decor pins, and then...

I GOT LOST ON PINTEREST FOR HOURS!  

Ah, hem. Back to the blog. Here's the recipe I promised you:

Forgotten Cookies

2 egg whites (large eggs)
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup coarsely chopped nuts

Beat egg whites, sugar and salt til stiff peaks form. Add chips and nuts. Line cookie sheet with parchment or wax paper, drop meringues by teaspoonful.  Put cookies in the oven preheated to 350 degrees. TURN OFF HEAT IMMEDIATELY and leave in overnight. DO NOT OPEN DOOR.

Makes about 2 plus dozen.

PS. No pictures of the making due to the weather. I don't make these on high humidity or rainy days.

So what challenges are you facing this year in your baking or candy making? Have you been able to adapt family recipes to preserve the memories while sticking to food restrictions or your budget?    

Crunchy Cereal Mix and Broncos Football

Sorry, everyone. Christmas has temporarily been preempted.

Why?

FOOTBALL!!!!!

Peyton Manning and the Broncos clinched the division title Sunday afternoon, AND Peyton Manning broke the NFL record for the number of touchdown passes thrown in a season!

CLICK HERE to watch Peyton Manning throw all 51 touchdown passes from this season - and be sure to notice what this classy guy says about the record.

It was an exciting game on Sunday afternoon...but even though Christmas was forgotten for about three hours and fifteen minutes, the Christmas baking went on.

I opted to make a batch of cereal mix - aka "Chex Mix" - while I watched the game. That way, if I really got caught up in watching Knowshon Moreno make another stellar run with the ball, the mix would still turn out fine.

This recipe is one for frazzled, distracted, or otherwise-employed cooks.

Easy-peasy! Even if you have to stop to watch Eric Decker catch another Peyton-pass.

Jan's Christmas Cereal Mix

Ingredients:

2 boxes of cereal, approximately 14 oz. each
    I use Great Value corn and rice cereal, but you can use your choice - just nothing presweetened
3 cups pretzels
1 cup mixed nuts
1/2 cup butter
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
4 teaspoons lemon juice
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce

Preheat your oven to 250°. Dump the cereals, pretzels and nuts into the largest pan you own. I use my roaster.

Melt the butter in a pan on top of your stove (or you can nuke it in your microwave). Once it's completely melted, stir in the rest of the ingredients (garlic and onion powders, lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce).

Pour the liquid over your cereal mix and stir, stir, stir.

Put the mix in your oven. Wait 15 minutes (and catch some more of the game - did Peyton Manning just throw another pass to Julius Thomas?). 

After 15 minutes, remove the pan from the oven. Stir, stir, stir again. Put it back in the oven for another 15 minutes. 

Go watch Matt Prater kick a field goal. (Did you know Matt Prater holds the NFL field goal record? 64 yards!!!!)

Do this four times (or five - you might lose track when the Broncos score another touchdown).

After a total of an hour or so, take the pan out of the oven and let the mix cool - stirring a few times during the cooling process.

Store the cooled mix in bags, containers, or covered bowls...and out of reach of the boys!

One of the great things about this mix is that you can make it with any combination of ingredients.

Don't like nuts? Leave them out!

Are you a Cheerios fan? Add them in!

Dried Cranberries? They're a great addition - after the cooking process!

What's your favorite way to make this time-tested treat?

And don't forget to watch the Broncos play the Oakland Raiders next week! 

You can even snooze through the game like Wynter does.....