A cheesy snack to bake and give

 If you've been reading either of my blogs long, you know that kitchen gifts are among my favorite things to make and give.  I have an entire Pinterest board dedicated to kitchen gifts.  From fudge to cookies to gift breads to drink mixes to frozen casseroles, this is a type of gift I always enjoy sharing.  Snack mixes are especially nice.

In addition, I've been thinking lately that I'd like to learn to make crackers.  Most of the crackers available in stores are the epitome of processed food.  Highly processed food, at that.

I recently went looking through my list of links to use in Christmas in July posts and found this one:  Cheesy Pizza Crackers.  These crackers are made with tomato paste, two kinds of cheese, and all sorts of pizza-y flavorings like oregano and garlic powder.  The dough is rolled out 1/8 inch thick and cut into one-inch squares, then baked  at 400º for 16 minutes or so.  They sound so delicious, and I'm thinking a tin of these would make a great kitchen gift for more than one person on my Christmas list.  What do you think? 

A nifty kitchen gift -- Pecan Pie Bark!

 

I recently came upon this Pecan Pie Bark recipe, shared by Chahinez at Lifestyle of a Foodie.

It sounds so scrumptious!

Made with a base of graham crackers, topped with homemade butterscotch and toasted pecans, one can just imagine how it will taste.  The butterscotch topping is made with unsalted butter, brown sugar, vanilla, and a pinch of salt.  It bakes for 10 minutes.  Sounds like a lot of delicious flavor for a minimum of time and ingredients!

Photo by Chahinez at Lifestyle of a Foodie

I can think of quite a few people on my Christmas list who might enjoy having a tin of this pecan pie bark.   I'll bet there are people on your list who need this bark in their lives!

Chocolate Graham Toffee Clusters -- a fun kitchen gift to try now

 

Photo from Inside BruCrew Life

 Here's a nifty snack that would make a wonderful kitchen gift.   I've shared so many recipes found on Jocelyn Brubaker's Inside BruCrew Life, and I've mentioned that Jocelyn has never steered me wrong.  I've never tried a recipe of hers that hasn't turned out well and been delicious.  I'm sure this Chocolate Toffee Graham Clusters recipe (which I haven't yet tried) will be no exception!

This simple recipe has only four ingredients: Golden Grahams cereal, dry roasted peanuts, Heath toffee bits, and chocolate melts.  It looks easy and so scrumptious!

You could package this in a number of ways for kitchen gifts.  Tins, either square or round, would work well, or you could use paper bags like the type coffee is packaged in, only with a cellophane window to show off the contents.  You can find tins in the dollar store, Walmart, craft stores, and even thrift stores.  

(A quick note that wherever you buy your tins, you will need to wash and dry them before packing kitchen gifts in them.   Wash it like any dish, but to dry it place both tin and cover in the oven and set the oven temp at 290º or so.  Less than 300º, anyway.  When the oven reaches temperature, turn it off.  Leave the tin, or tins, there until the oven cools down.  It is now ready to use.)

Here's one source on Amazon for the kraft coffee bags with windows: Coffee bags for kitchen gifts.  I'm sure they can be purchased in many other places as well.  Here's a screenshot:

 

Happy snacking and gifting!

A busy December Saturday

 

Saturdays in December always seem to be busy, wouldn't you agree?  Today was no exception.

As usual on Saturday mornings, Mr. T spent the hours from 8 to 10 a.m. at the local flag wave near our town's McDonalds.  It was below zero but a total of about 20 hardy patriots were out there standing in the snow and waving lots of American flags.

While he was gone, I wrapped some gifts, wrote some Christmas cards, and prepared a plate full of lemon shortbread thumbprints to take to our friend Terry.

Upon Mr. T's return, we headed 45 minutes south, picked up Terry, and headed out for a late breakfast at a favorite restaurant.  Despite the need for masks and contact info, the restaurant was busy and had the almost-normal holiday weekend bustle about it.  What a sumptuous breakfast we enjoyed!

We visited with Terry for awhile back at her house, then in late afternoon headed home, stopping at Lowe's on the way to hopefully find a container for a gift basket.  We found a nice pine crate that will serve the purpose nicely. 

I had finished a small crochet project en route to Terry's, and started another one this evening.  During the time left before supper (we didn't need much!), I wrote a bunch more Christmas cards and Mr. T made a double batch of Cinnamon Pretzels for a couple of gifts.

So it was a productive Saturday as well as a very enjoyable one.  I'll leave you with a photo of our Christmas tree:

I had turned off the tree lights, so they really aren't visible in the photo.  It is very pretty, though, we think.

The actual 2018 baking list

 Back again to give an update as to what baking and kitchen-gift-making actually got done for Christmas 2018.    Mr. T made several batches of cookies, as he always enjoys helping out!

🎄 A double batch of Whipped Shortbread Cookies (pictured at top of post)

🎄 A double batch of Chocolate Mint Crisps


🎄 A double batch of Sacher Torte Cookies


🎄  A double batch of Secret Spice Cookies


🎄  A double batch of Eggnog Log Cookies

🎄 A double batch of Chocolate Spritz

and then single batches of

🎄 Almond Shortbread Thumbprints -- some with apricot and some with raspberry

🎄  Lemon Shortbread Thumbprint Cookies

🎄 No-Bake Cookies

For candy, I made:

🎄 Arlene’s Easy Fudge (I used peanut butter chips instead of the butterscotch along with the chocolate -- and wow!)

🎄  Heavenly Delight

🎄  Special Holiday Fudge

🎄  Chocolate-Dipped Orange Slices



And for other kitchen gifts:

🎄 Christmas Granola

🎄  Cinnamon Pretzels

That is pretty much it.  I didn't do all the baking or make all of the kitchen gifts that I had planned, but I was very pleased with what did get done.  Baking in my Christmas kitchen is such a delight for me!

Another fun kitchen gift!

Photo by Jocelyn at Inside BruCrew Life

Here's a snack mix recipe you could try right away to see if it might fit the bill for kitchen gifts this coming December.  As I mentioned yesterday, I enjoy giving kitchen gifts and nearly always do something of a snack mix nature for my son and son-in-law at Christmas time.   And then we always like to make a big box or basket of treats for my husband's boss and his family. 

For that, I will put snack mixes in small tins or other containers to nestle them in the large box or basket.  I love to tuck in bags of holiday coffee, boxes of small flavored creamers (the shelf-stable kind), tins of cookies, boxes of biscotti, and much more.

This Hot Cocoa Trail Mix, from Jocelyn at Inside BruCrew Life,  looks like it will be a hit with everyone.  It contains peanuts (both regular and chocolate-covered), cocoa almonds, chocolate chips, and mini marshmallows which have been coated in white chocolate.  Wow.  (Have you ever tasted cocoa almonds?  I bought a box of the individual packs of them to take on the plane last summer when we went to Nevada.  They are delicious and I imagine they will add a great flavor to this trail mix.)

This wouldn't be practical for a summer hike (unless it was kept cold), but you could certainly pack some into a tin and keep it on the counter for the snackers in your household.  Give it a try!  I think I probably will!

A kitchen gift idea -- White Chocolate Peppermint Popcorn

Photo from Skip to My Lou

I'm not sure about you, but I know that I'm always looking for new ideas to give as kitchen gifts.  Every Christmas I will often give a homemade snack mix of some sort to the men in my family.  We also give a large box or basket full of various snacks and treats to my husband's boss and his family.

At first glance this popcorn snack looks just like the sugary pink popcorn that my grandmother would make for special occasions when I was very young.  Hers was just made with a sugar syrup tinted with food coloring, I am sure.  But this White Chocolate and Peppermint Popcorn from Skip to My Lou would be even better.

I'm pretty sure I'll be making at least one batch of this for Christmas 2018!  Maybe you would like to try it, too!

Tentative Christmas baking list for 2016

Vintage ad from my collection

Yes, here it is!  I took some time on Rudolph Day to make a tentative list for Christmas baking and candy-making.  Observant readers will note that this may be scaled down somewhat from previous years.  I've included links to as many of the recipes as I could.

2016 TENTATIVE CHRISTMAS BAKING LIST
Apricot Shortbread (have not tried this one yet)
Whipped Shortbread Cookies

Christmas cut-out cookies
Almond Shortbread Thumbprints
Eggnog Log Cookies

Chocolate Spritz
Chocolate Mint Crisps

Date-Nut Casserole Cookies
Pepparkakor

And you can find more of our favorite Christmas cookie recipes here:  Fun and Festive Cookies.




And then the candies I hope to make include:

Chocolate Dipped Orange Slices
Heavenly Delight
Coffee Shop Fudge

Photo from Taste of Home

 Arlene’s Easy Fudge

And, as of now, there will be one more kitchen gift that I know of: Cinnamon Pretzels.

Kitchen gifts from 2013

I often find that my actual baking list varies quite a bit from the tentative list I made ahead of time.  This year I've tried to be less ambitious.  We will see how it plays out!

A yummy snack to share!

Photo from Inside BruCrew Life

This recipe I'm about to share is probably the most often repinned item on my Snacks to Share Pinterest board.  It's being repinned a lot right now, I'm sure because it's summer and fresh fruit is so good and abundant right now.  Here's the link: Coconut Cream Fruit Dip.   It's been repinned over 150 times so far!

Jocelyn, at Inside BruCrew Life, has such a knack for devising truly wonderful recipes of all types, but her specialty is sweets. This recipe looks so delicious and easy, and it uses just a few ingredients -- cream cheese, canned cream of coconut, marshmallow cream, and whipped topping.  Rum extract is also suggested, which I personally would not use, but Jocelyn says that vanilla extract may be substituted.

Although this is a summery flavor -- and would be a fun treat to try right now -- it would also be pretty at Christmas with strawberries or red and green grapes.  The dip itself has such a pretty snowy look!  Have fun with this recipe!

Inspiration for Christmas kitchen gifts ... and a recipe to try

From a vintage Farm Journal Christmas magazine

I love to give gifts from my kitchen!  And, if you've been reading very long, you also know that I have quite a collection of older [some vintage, some not] Christmas magazines.  In 2014, I'm going to try and keep looking through these all year round to get some inspiration.  The inspiration will take all sorts of forms -- handmade gifts, kitchen gifts, poems, recipes, memories, decorating ... pretty much what this blog is all about.

This week I was looking through some older Country Woman magazines.  Sometimes, one can find fresh inspiration in the simplest of prose.  That was the case here with the introduction to an article called "Give Gifts of Good Taste This Christmas".  I'm not even sure who wrote these words -- possibly the food editor, who at that time was Janaan Cunningham -- or possibly someone else, so I don't even know who to give credit to.  But the writer's words inspired me:

"Stirred up 'from scratch' and seasoned with love, gifts from the kitchen capture the spirit of Christmas in a delicious way.
"So go ahead and simmer some zesty picante sauce, bake a batch of rich Christmas cookies or set a special bread rising to the occasion.
"Then package your yummy presents in pretty tins or on colorful plates ... and tie them with bright ribbons or twine.  Each will wrap up the holidays with memorable down-home flavor!"

As I thought about these words -- and the article, which included recipes for hot picante sauce, rosemary jelly, and more -- it occurred to me that sometimes, in order for kitchen gifts to happen, we have to plan way ahead.  Say, right now, when we're dreaming over seed catalogs and planning our gardens.  My own garden is tiny and I'm not enough of a gardener to grow quantities of produce.  But if you are, why not make some plans to grow extra tomatoes and some hot peppers for picante sauce or salsa; herbs to make herb jellies or butters with; cucumbers for pickles, and so on?  Or plan now to go berry picking and make jams or jellies for Christmas gifts.  When I was a child, such gifts were common among neighbors, and we always looked forward to the various treats.

Of course, kitchen gifts can include much more than canned or pickled items.  I enjoy giving cookies, fudge and other candies, jar mixes, spice blends, and more.  Snack mixes or special nut blends are also favorites.  To see some of my favorites, you can click on the "kitchen gifts" label in the label cloud at the top right.  Or you could also check out my my Kitchen Gifts board on Pinterest, where I have over 100 great kitchen gift ideas pinned.

In browsing through another older December issue of Country Woman, I came upon this delicious sounding recipe for Iced Almonds.  I just may try it for the coming year!

Another family recipe ~ "Bessie's Mix"

From Life Magazine, June 1952

 

Kitchen gifts were somewhat of a tradition in my family as I was growing up.  My mother made pans and pans of her maple fudge, but she also made lots of Christmas cookies,  and loaves of cinnamon swirled bread which she topped with a thin white icing plus sliced almonds and a few candied cherries.  Although I don't recall my grandmother giving kitchen gifts in my childhood, in later years she made homemade hot cocoa mix by the jar to give to her married children and grandchildren.  And she, too, made fudge -- I believe it was the traditional five minute fudge only using some butterscotch chips in addition to the chocolate ones.  

But one of the favorite, favorite gifts our family received each year was a gift-wrap or contact-paper covered coffee can filled with what we called "Bessie's Mix."  My great-aunt made batches of Chex party mix every year and packaged it in the festively covered cans for gift-giving.

A few years ago, I made Christmas memory books for my married kids and my parents, and ended up making a couple for other relatives as well.  At the time I did a bit of research to try and find the recipe Bessie would have used.  It's somewhat different from the Chex Mix of today.  I seem to
recall that there were short, thin pretzel sticks in it, peanuts, and Cheerios.  I definitely remember fighting with my siblings over the Cheerios.  These seemed to absorb the butter and seasonings better than anything else, and were really tasty.  But I never did find the recipe I thought she had used. 

So I cobbled together a few 1950s recipes I found on line and came up with this:

"BESSIE'S MIX"
2 cups Corn Chex
2 cups Rice Chex
2 cups Wheat Chex
2 cups Cheerios
2 cups thin short pretzel sticks
3/4 cup salted peanuts
1/2 cup melted butter
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon seasoned salt
 Preheat oven to 250°. Mix cereals, pretzels and peanuts together in a large bowl.  Combine the melted butter and seasonings; pour over cereal mixture and toss all together to mix very well.  Spread cereal mixture on a baking sheet or in a 13x9-inch pan.  Bake mixture for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes.  Spread mix on paper towels to cool before serving or packaging.

 Transfer mix to Contact˙-paper-covered cans with lids -- like coffee cans or peanut cans.  Give a tin of mix to everyone on your Christmas list, using a recycled Christmas card front to tape on the can as a tag.

In preparation for this post, I tried doing a bit more research.  This time I located the original 1952 recipe, the one that goes with the picture above.  Here it is:

Wonderful nibbling
at snack-time!

Try this new PARTY MIX

Add 1/2 c. butter in shallow baking pan. Stir in 1 T. Worcestershire sauce. Add 2 c. Wheat Chex, 2 c. Rice Chex, and 1/2 c. nuts. Sprinkle with 1/4 t. salt and 1/8 t. garlic salt; mix well. Heat 30 mins in 300 degree oven, stirring every 10 minutes. Cool.


Note that it contains no Corn Chex, which hadn't yet been invented in 1952.  But I am pretty sure that the recipe my great-aunt made did contain corn chex. 

And I also found this recipe: Real Original Chex Party Mix.

Really, there are endless variations of this mix (and families have their own traditional names for it like Scrabble, or Nuts and Bolts) -- but the bottom line is that a tin of mix still makes a wonderful gift to share with a family!

Candied Pumpkin Spice Nuts ~ a great kitchen gift!

(Photo from Taste of Home)

I was looking for something different in the way of a nutty confection to make for a friend's birthday gift.  This recipe sounded good, so I decided to try it: Candied Pumpkin Spice Pecans.  I didn't have pecans on hand (and they are so expensive right now that I didn't want to buy any), but I did have a can of mixed nuts, so I decided to try that.

I had just over 3 cups of mixed nuts, and the recipe calls for 2 cups of pecans, so I made one-and-a-half times the recipe.   I always find making any caramel-type recipe like this a bit intimidating -- it seems the sugar and butter always separate at some point -- but it worked out fine in the end.  It seemed to me that the nuts were going to end up a bit greasy, so after they had cooled on the foil and appeared set, I transferred them to paper towels until they were completely cool before packaging them in a jar.

These went over well with our friend -- his wife has just asked me for the recipe -- and here at home too, as I had enough left over for us to enjoy some as well.  These nuts would make a nice kitchen gift for friends and family this Christmas!

Candied Walnuts

This past weekend I tried a recipe for candied walnuts.  I was making a salad recipe that called for toasted pecans.  I didn't have a lot of pecans on hand, and I also wanted to kick the flavor of the salad up just a little bit, so I went looking for a candied walnut recipe.  This one, which I found in one of my Quick Cooking annual cookbooks -- Candied Walnuts -- did not disappoint.

(Parenthetically, let me add that these annual cookbooks -- of which I own three -- were acquired free because I had recipes published in Simple & Delicious or Light & Tasty in the past.  This is a fun way to get some very nice cookbooks, so if you have never submitted recipes to any of these magazines -- including Taste of Home -- you might want to consider doing so.  Even if your recipes are not used right away, you will receive a free magazine and often a free hardcover book eventually if they are  published.)

Back to the Candied Walnuts.  I don't keep balsamic vinegar on hand, so I just used cider vinegar.  And my canola oil was at the back of the cabinet, so I used light olive oil which was near the front.  These ingredients worked out just fine.  The walnuts were super easy to make and they are just delicious!  It's so nice to be able to make something so fancy and different with so little effort.

(Photo by Taste of Home)

These were good in a salad and they would be nice as a snack or appetizer, but I'm posting the recipe link here in my Christmas kitchen because I think they would make a wonderful kitchen gift.  Don't you agree?

Cranberry Cheese Log ~ a yummy appetizer!

(Photo by Taste of Home)

Last night I went to a ladies' Christmas fellowship and needed to  bring along finger foods to share.  I brought a tray of cookies plus a cheese log and crackers.  For the crackers I chose Triscuits®, which seemed just right with the flavors and texture of this cheese log.  The recipe may be found here:  Cranberry Cheese Ball.  I chose to form the cheese mixture into a log, as I think cheese logs are easier and neater to serve than cheese balls.  I rolled it in chopped toasted walnuts rather than pecans.


This seems to be a very forgiving and adaptable recipe.  Rather than gorgonzola, I used just regular crumbled blue cheese (low-fat) from the grocery store since this is what I had, and it worked just fine.  I left out the chopped red & green peppers because I had none on hand, and left out the celery due to lack of time.  For the onion, I reconstituted 2 teaspoons of dried minced onion in hot water for 10 minutes or so and then drained off the excess water (there wasn't much).  The flavor was wonderful and, although I may add the peppers next time, they are not necessary.  This seemed to go over very well at the fellowship, and I will definitely be making this again and again at Christmas time.  Easy and delicious!