Christmas Baking

Ever since I can remember my grandmother always made candies for Christmas.  She would start about mid-November and cook multiple batches of every one of her confections and we’d eat on them from Thanksgiving to New Year’s.  I always gave them to my teachers and we would help ship them to our friends and relatives all over the US.  Everyone LOVED them and couldn’t wait to get their little candy sampler from her every year.

Since she has gotten older, she has stopped making them.  Since I did pretty well at cooking Thanksgiving dinner, I thought I would give the candies a try.  I’m a much better baker than I am a cook and since I had watched/helped her for years when I was little…I decided to tackle them.  We went next door to her house and got her recipes for our favorites (you know the recipes are good when they are written on old envelopes and are covered in buttered fingerprints :)) and figured out the game plan.  I compiled all of the recipes and made a master ingredient/shopping list and we started on our shopping adventure.  Bless her heart, I’m not really sure how she afforded all of this…it was quite expensive!

All of the ingredients, ready to go!

The next morning, I got up early, made coffee in my new coffee maker, turned on my Christmas station on Pandora and started cooking. 

Anyway, this is what I accomplished on baking day 1:

• Coconut Balls – My first dessert and absolute favorite…they taste kind of like mounds and/or almond joys :)

 

Ready to be dipped in chocolate

First dessert down, only 12 more to go!

• Marshmallow Santas – This was a recipe I found in a magazine and I thought they were adorable.  I decided they were purely for looks though as they were difficult to eat…oh well, live and learn :)

• Then I went on a dipping spree and dipped mint oreos, regular oreos, and pretzels (sorry no pictures :( ), I even made these Santa pretzels (another magazine find)  They looked much cuter in the inspiration picture, but oh well :) 

I only wish I had taken a picture of the kitchen by the end of the day because it was a disaster!  I was almost as bad…I was COVERED in chocolate. 

The next day, I got up and finished cooking before heading to Alex’s house for Christmas (My Christmas gift to his parents was a big basket of coffee and these goodies so I was banking on all of these things to turn out)

Since we live in an old house, our kitchen is teeny tiny with NO counterspace so finding places for all of this candy was quite entertaining.  I unfortunately didn’t get pictures of a lot of things because of this, but I’ll share what I have :)

These are all of the goodies laid out to go to my grandparents, but I put the same thing in Alex’s parents’ goodie basket :)  In the circular platter (clockwise from top):  dipped oreos, rolo pretzels, Marshmallow santas, chocolate peppermint chews, dipped pretzels and pecan pralines in the middle.  Middle platter:  coconut balls, crock-pot candy, and turtles, Back:  Turtles and Peanut Butter Balls

I bagged each candy individually, and put a tag on each to tell what it was and a little description.

The final product!  I gave them two bags of coffee (their favorites:  SBC Henry’s blend and Sbux Christmas Blend), bags of all 13 of my goodies, and two Starbucks ornaments (a cold cup and a hot cup).  They LOVED it!

Overall, the candies were a big hit.  There were some that were obviously bigger hits than the others, and not surprisingly, 2 of them were my grandmother’s specialties.  Everyone loved all of the dipped goodies like pretzels and oreos, but the three favorites were 1.) Turtles 2.) Coconut Balls, 3.) Peanut Butter Balls  Each person had other things they liked, but those were the three overall amongst everyone that tried them.  I had to agree though because I’ve always enjoyed the coconut balls and peanut butter balls. 

As I’ve mentioned before, I love the store bought turtle candies and when I found a recipe, I just had to try them.  I tweaked the recipe a bit as I went so I wasn’t sure how they would turn out, but EVERYONE told me that they were their favorites and they were better than the storebought kind.  I was so proud!  So now, that is my new specialty :)

My sweet grandmother, whose recipes I borrowed, said “where did you learn to make all these candies?  They are so beautiful they should be in a store window” I told them I learned them from her and she said “Well these taste much better than mine did” ;)  It made me smile :)

As with any type of cooking, I learned a LOT (like how you cannot put the undipped turtles on wax paper to harden…they will NOT come off and requires reheating!), but overall I was pretty impressed with how everything turned out :)

Anyway, I know that I will keep the top three and some of the dipped goodies for next year, but hopefully I can expand my candy making repertoire before next Christmas :)