Peppermint Mocha Cookies

 

 This is a new recipe for us as of this past Christmas.  Again, it was a case of my hubby (or it could have been me!) wanting to try a new and different cookie recipe.  Once again I turned to my trusty Christmas Cookie Exchange Pinterest board.  

 
And these Chocolate Peppermint Cookies from Ambitious Kitchen just jumped out at me, especially when I read about the option of adding espresso powder to make a peppermint mocha variation.  We both love peppermint mocha coffee and I know a good many other folks do as well. 

So I made the recipe as written adding the 2 teaspoons of espresso powder as suggested.  Wow!

Photo by Ambitious Kitchen

I did make the cookie dough balls smaller than specified, using about half the amount of dough for each cookie -- that is, 1 tablespoon of dough rather than two tablespoons.  (We like our Christmas cookies on the smaller side so we can fit a greater variety on our cookie trays.)

And I honestly can't remember at this point if I added the white chocolate drizzle or not.  I know I dipped them in the melted chocolate and sprinkled on the crushed candy canes.  I'm pretty sure I did add the drizzle.  

These cookies are scrumptious!  I would label them a quintessential Christmas cookie.  They've earned a place in our regular Christmas cookie list.

A festive Christmas cookie recipe to try!

 

It's hard to think of a more festive flavor combination than dark chocolate and peppermint, though I'm sure there could be many other contenders for the "festive flavors" category.  I had saved the link for these fabulous Dark Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies -- a 2020 post by Olivia at Liv for Cake.

I was picturing traditional candy cane cookies only dark chocolate, and trying to think what that would look like, though I thought the taste would be amazing.  

Well, these are actually a round dark chocolate crinkle cookie (the recipe calls for them to be scooped with a cookie scoop, but as regular readers know I prefer to shape cookies into balls instead of scooping).  The baked cookies are dipped in melted white chocolate, then sprinkled with crushed or chopped candy canes.  

Aren't they beautiful!?   I love the way she has tied them up with red and white twine.

Photo by Liv for Cake

They would make a gorgeous addition to my cookie trays!

Three recipes worth a trip down the chimney

 

 Yes, that is the whimsical title of a Hershey's ad I had clipped and saved some years ago.   In case you missed it, I thought it would be fun to share here in the Christmas kitchen.  I cropped each one out of the ad to make the recipe easier to read.

First is Santa's Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies.  This sounds pretty amazing -- a chocolate cookie with melted vanilla chips swirled on top, then sprinkled with toffee bits and, if desired, a maraschino cherry half.  How festive!

Cherry Cheesecake Bars are next.  I always like a good bar cookie, and cherry cheesecake is a favorite.  This is a brownie with a baked on cheesecake topping which includes chopped maraschino cherries and almond extract.

And lastly there are Holiday Mini Kisses Treasure Cookies.  These are made with graham cracker crumbs, sweetened condensed milk and coconut, making them sound a bit like the Magic Cookie Bars of days gone by.  But they are not at all similar.  These are a drop cookie and are baked.  (Regular semisweet chocolate chips can be substituted for mini kisses.)

I'm thinking I may try one of these for Christmas 2024.  What do you think?
 

American Chocolate Week in the Christmas kitchen

 

 So the third full week in March is American Chocolate Week every year.  Who knew?  Certainly not me.  Squeaking in under the wire (since today is the last day for it this year) I thought I'd just refer readers to a few chocolate recipes on both of my blogs.

On my Kitchen Table blog, check out the "Chocolate" label in the label cloud.  You'll find a multitude of wonderful recipes, from cakes and other desserts to candy and cookies.  I also learned that I need to apply the chocolate label to many more of my posts.  I evidently added it to my list of labels at some point and there are many older posts that don't have it.  But I'm sure you'll have fun with the recipes that you find there.

On this Christmas Kitchen blog, I'm just now creating a chocolate label, so I've only applied it to a few posts so far.  But it's snowing here in New Hampshire today, really a huge snow dump as over 20 inches is predicted.  If I was a) eating carbs or b) eating chocolate right now, I would be in my kitchen as we speak whipping up a cozy muffin recipe with plenty of chocolate.  Like one of these: Chocolate Gengerbread Muffins or these Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Muffins.  

I suspect Mr. T may be making some fudge later.  He seems to have reached the conclusion that fudge in the freezer is a year-round necessity.  Although I'm trying to stay away from it, I really can't disagree.

Holiday Desserts -- a festive 1993 cookbooklet

 

Yes, surprising as it may seem, 1993 is now vintage.  Here is another booklet I came across in a kitchen drawer at the old homestead.  This one is in mint condition and will soon be offered for sale in my Etsy shop.  It has a glitzy, elegant look that makes it most attractive.  I've seen a number of these recipes singly in Christmas magazines over the years, but it's so handy to have them all together.

Here's the blurb from the inside front cover:

"Now Baker's, Diamond Walnuts, and Jell-O are making it easier than ever to create luscious holiday desserts at home.  We've selected our favorite holiday recipes -- fudgy brownies, nutty cookies, tempting pies and cakes, and brought them together for you in this booklet -- all quick, all easy, all very festive.  Perfect for family get-togethers and great as gifts, these treats will add a delicious touch of sweetness to your holiday season."

Recipes include One-Bowl Brownies, Cream Cheese Brownies, and Walnut Crunch Brownies,

Thumbprints, Super Chocolate Chunk Cookies, Delectabites, Chocolate Walnut Bars, 

Double Layer Pumpkin Pie, No Bake Mini Cheesecakes, 

One Bowl Chocolate Fudge (with four variations),  Triple Dipped Treats,

German Sweet Chocolate Pie, Caribbean Fudge Pie, Praline Dream Pie, 

Spiced Cranberry Orange Mold, Holiday Poke Cake,

Coconut Candy Bar Cake, Coconut Snowballs, and Baker's Best Macaroons.

This certainly puts me in the baking mood!  What about you?

The Festive Touch

 

 Now here's a fun little recipe leaflet from 1961!  Published by the Nestle company, this little booklet would have come bound inside a magazine.  Its 14 recipes feature Pet evaporated milk and Nestle baking morsels.  

Pet Evaporated Milk, we are reminded, has "twice the country cream in every drop" and is "the velvet ingredient -- thin milk would never do."  And "Nestle's makes the very best chocolate (butterscotch, too).  Only Nestle's Morsels melt so smoothly, blend so evenly."

All of the recipes are pictured. They include Hot Fudge Sauce, Chocolate Frosting, No-Bake Brownies, Pineapple Bavarian (with a peppermint variation), Apple Nut Dessert, Chocolate Cherry Creams, Nut Fudge (with a double layer fudge variation), Easy Graham Bars, Chocolate Logs, Fudgy Macaroons, Toll House Marble Squares, Polka Daters, Butterscotch Crunchies (with several variations), Pumpkin Pie, and Festive Fruitcake. Most of them look really scrumptious, and it may be that someone reading this has been looking for one of these recipes for decades!

I just noticed in the photo above, which shows the entire leaflet from the back, that the colors used for the words "The Festive Touch" resemble butterscotch and chocolate.  I think that is likely purposeful.  

To me, one of the most endearing things about this little leaflet is the little scribble of red ink on the front, just above the ellipsis after the word "touch".  It looks as if someone, about to write a Christmas card or a gift tag, was testing their festive red pen to make sure it still worked.

Such a fun find!  This has just been listed in my Etsy shop.

Christmas recipes featuring oranges

 Yesterday I promised that I would share some festive orange recipes today.  Some of these I've shared before, but others are new.  There's something about oranges, or chocolate and orange together that just says Christmas!

Chocolate Dipped Orange Candy Slices are such a fun and easy homemade candy.  We make them most every year!  The store brand orange slice candy that I buy is naturally flavored.  Amazing!

 Chocolate Orange Cookies sound so scrumptious.  I have linked to the recipe before here in my Christmas Kitchen, and I thought I had actually tried this recipe, but I find no evidence of it.  So an orange has gone onto my shopping list, along with the candy orange slices that I need for dipping.  The chocolate orange cookies will be one of the cookies I choose to personally bake.  (My hubby has done most of the cookie baking.)

I was sure I had seen a recipe for chocolate orange muffins somewhere, but I had to go looking.  These Marbled Chocolate Orange Muffins sound amazing, and the recipe makes a large quantity of muffins.   They would make a lovely kitchen gift this Christmas!  The recipe, as well as the photo below is from Sweetie'n'Salty Shoppe.

 

And lastly -- this year I found a recipe for Easy Orange Spice Turkish Delight that I am eager to try.  It has such a "Narnia" sound to it!  The recipe (and photo) is from Heather Baird at Sprinkle Bakes.  It was posted in 2015, so I am late getting to this party.  And also, it calls for the use of a microwave, and we recently got rid of ours.  But I may look up a similar recipe elsewhere and see if I can figure out a stovetop method.  Doesn't this Turkish Delight look magical?

 
Do you think you'll make any orange or chocolate-orange treats this Christmas?

November muffin recipe: Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Muffins

 

 I've been racking my brain and searching my Pinterest boards for a suitable muffin recipe for November.  Now I'm down to the wire! I've already used apples, pumpkin, and cranberry recipes galore -- all the fall flavors.  So these chocolate chip oatmeal muffins (with a coffee glaze) from Jocelyn at Inside BruCrew Life look really yummy and don't call for any unusual ingredients.

Well, maybe toffee baking bits would be unusual to some people, but I nearly always have them on hand.  Even the coffee glaze uses just a couple teaspoons of leftover coffee.

An interesting feature of this recipe is the Cake Spice -- a dry spice mixture which Jocelyn makes and keeps on hand in a jar to use in baking.  It seems like it might give a warm fall and winter flavor to these muffins.

These muffins would make a nice kitchen gift.  The coffee glaze and the sprinkle of chocolate mini chips (alternatively, I think chocolate jimmies would also work well) make them a little bit fancy.

I've learned that I can trust Jocelyn's recipes.  She is an amazing and prolific baker who has never steered me wrong yet.

Photo from Inside BruCrew Life

I just may try these for some of the kitchen gift recipients on my Christmas list!

One more fudge recipe -- Samoa Fudge

 

 It was a difficult choice trying to decide what to share for my final Christmas in July post this year.  I finally decided to share one last fudge recipe.  

But first, a word about the vintage advertisement at the top of the page.  It's from a 1958 Woman's Day magazine.  I've been going through some of my stash and scanning particularly fun ads.  I couldn't resist this one, particularly since my grandmother made 5-Minute Fudge every Christmas.  I will likely end up tossing these older magazines, even though I love them.  The stories and decorating ideas are still good, but the pages are so brittle! We will see, however.

Now for today's fudge recipe.  It's for Samoa Fudge and it is from Aimee at Shugary Sweets.  It's a spin on the flavor of the Girl Scout cookies called Samoas.  It combines chocolate, coconut, and caramel flavors.  Samoas are my hands-down favorite of Girl Scout cookies, so I am eager to try this fudge recipe.

Photo by Shugary Sweets

I hope you will enjoy this fudge if you try it.  I surely intend to do so.

Thanks to all who have spent time with me here in my Christmas kitchen this July.  It's been fun!

Another fudge recipe

 

Photo from Pixabay

I just can't seem to stay away from Oreos as a fudge ingredient!  I guess maybe it's because our grandchildren so enjoy the jars of Oreos we keep on hand for them at our little camp.  

Before starting my Christmas in July posts, I came across a great resource of 40 Fantastic Fudge Recipes from Andrea at The Cottage Market. Peppermint Oreo Fudge is the first one I picked, and now I'm sharing Double Decker Oreo Fudge.  This is a recipe from Naomi Robinson at Bakers Royale.  It's one of those nice and easy fudge recipes that uses a can of sweetened condensed milk.

Screenshot from Bakers Royale

Doesn't it look good?  I think it would make a really yummy Christmas gift.  Maybe a tin with some of the peppermint oreo fudge and some of this might look nice.  But not everyone likes peppermint, I know.  I'm pretty sure I'll be trying this double decker oreo fudge come December, if not before!

Peppermint Oreo Fudge

 

 Fudge makes such a wonderful kitchen gift, don't you agree?  I'm always on the lookout for a new and tempting fudge recipe.

And nothing says Christmas like candy canes!  It's no wonder I was drawn to the recipe for Peppermint Oreo Fudge, from Ashton at Something Swanky.  

This recipe has all the peppermint flavor of crushed candy canes, but without the aggravation of crushing them up, as it calls for the candy cane variety of Hershey Kisses.

My hubby walked by as I was preparing this post and said, "Oh my, that fudge looks good!"  I think you'll agree:

Photo by Something Swanky

Of course, he also said that we needed to try the recipe out right away.  I checked the ingredients list though, and those candy cane Hershey kisses are no doubt impossible to find this time of year.  If any of you happen to have a bag stashed away, though, you might like to give this recipe a try.  If not, do as I'm going to do and pin it or save it elsewhere for sweet kitchen gifts in December!

Welcome to Christmas in July!

 

Yes, indeed, welcome to Christmas in July at my Christmas kitchen!  Again this year I am swinging open the door to the Christmas kitchen every day through the month of July.  I have been doing this every July since 2012.  That first year I guess I only managed 24 posts, but in subsequent years it appears that I've  done 31 each July.

I'm hoping, as usual,  to share poems, recipes, crafts, ornaments, gift ideas and much more.  I'm going to start by sharing a simple recipe for an easy festive no-bake cookie that you could make right away if you happen to have purchased fig bars in the house.  I've posted this recipe before, but as  far as I can tell, it was in 2007 and there were no comments on it, so I'm guessing most of my current readers will not have seen it.  

FANCY FIG COOKIES

These start with purchased fig bars (like Fig Newtons®). Cut the bars in half lengthwise to make sticks, or in half diagonally to make triangles. Dip the pieces in melted chocolate, then in chopped nuts. Place on foil-lined baking sheets and chill until chocolate is set.

I like to make them triangle shaped and would tend to use chopped walnuts to dip them in, though I'm thinking pistachios would be very pretty too.  They look so fancy.

What a perfect Christmas cookie to try in July!  No baking, just chilling, and wouldn't they be nice with a glass of iced coffee or iced tea?

Some of our candy making with the grands

 

Back when Christmas was still weeks away, we set a day, as previously mentioned on both blogs, to make some candy, do a bit of crafting, and go out for ice cream sundaes.  It turned into trimming the Christmas tree as well, which was fun, and singing lots of Christmas carols in the car.

I promised to share some of the candy recipes we used, so I will mention two here and two over on my regular blog.  We made Creamsicle Fudge, Chocolate Dipped Orange Slices, Rocky Road Fudge, and Candy Cane Fudge.

Creamsicle Fudge is, as you might guess, a fudge with the orange and vanilla flavors of a creamsicle.  

It is a little too sweet for many people,  although I must say that a younger friend of mine for many years in high school and college had a little holiday fudge business, and found that the Creamsicle was one of her top sellers.  But Mr. T had wanted to make it this Christmas anyway, so it seemed natural to have the grands help with it.  Josiah took on that project, and may have wished he hadn't when, near the end of the process, we discovered we had no red food coloring (only yellow) to tint the orange part of the fudge.  The best we could do was to use green and pretend the flavor was lime, not orange.  It does look pretty and  slightly Christmasy, I will say that for it.

The other candy recipe I will mention here is Rocky Road Fudge.   

Julia and Ari made this fudge together.  Below is Ari stirring the peanuts and marshmallows into the chocolate fudge mixture.  This is one of those easy fudge recipes that just use chocolate chips, a bit of butter, and a can of sweetened condensed milk.

Julia prepares to spread the Rocky Road while Ari licks the chocolate pan!

You can check my kitchen table blog sometime this week for the other 2 candy recipes.  Enjoy these if you try them!

One more cookie recipe to try -- this one's a bar cookie!

 

Bar cookies are great because they are so easy to put together, and you can cut the squares or bars in whatever size you see fit.  I'm always happy to have a new bar cookie recipe to try for our Christmas cookie trays.  This one seems like it would be especially nice since it combines chocolate peppermint bark with a frosted sugar cookie.  

This recipe is from Jocelyn at Inside BruCrew Life.  As I've mentioned before, Jocelyn is one of my trusted sources when it comes to baking.  All of her recipes that I've tried have been simply scrumptious, and quite easy to make as well.  

Chocolate Peppermint Bark Sugar Cookie Bars look and sound delicious! A chocolate sugar cookie bar is topped with a frosting rich in butter and whipping cream.  Then the frosting is sprinkled with chopped peppermint bark candy bars.

Can't you just see a few of these on your cookie trays this Christmas?

Chocolate Cherry Hot Cocoa

Image by candoyi from Pixabay

If summer follows in spring's chilly footsteps, it's even possible we could have some snow this month.  There was snow on Mother's Day weekend, so anything is now officially possible!  History tells us that one year in New Hampshire, there was a frost in all twelve months.  If we happen to get a cool evening in July, that would be a good time to try out a new cocoa recipe well in advance of Christmas hospitality.  

This wonderful-looking hot cocoa recipe comes from A Cultivated Nest and is for Chocolate Cherry Hot Cocoa.  It reminds me of the long-ago days when my mother would make hot cocoa for us and our friends after a chilly afternoon sledding out in the sloping fields of my childhood.  She usually stirred it up from scratch in the same way that this recipe is made.  We always had marshmallow fluff on our cocoa, however, which would be much too sweet in this recipe.  The whipped cream is the perfect topper!

Photo from A Cultivated Nest

Why not give this recipe a try on a cool summer evening -- or just file it away until the holiday season?  It would be a festive treat to share with friends!

Let's celebrate Christmas in July with a cookie!

Photo and recipe from Jamie Cooks It Up!

It's high time, I think, for one last recipe, and what better day to try out a new Christmas cookie than on July's Rudolph Day?  There could hardly be a more celebratory cookie than this one: Soft Frosted Chocolate Peppermint Cookies from Jamie Cooks It Up!.

These sound incredibly delicious -- starting with a soft, rich cookie made chocolatey with both cocoa powder and milk chocolate chips.  And brown sugar!  I think any chocolate cookie with brown sugar has a greater depth of flavor than one made with white sugar.  These are a molded or shaped cookie rather than a drop cookie -- that is, you form the dough into balls.   To my mind, this always produces a nicer looking cookie.

And then the frosting -- white chocolate and cream cheese will make it nice and creamy, and both peppermint and vanilla extracts (plus crushed candy canes on top) give the perfect flavor to top the chocolate cookies.  

I've learned to trust recipes from Jamie Cooks It Up!.  They are always scrumptious, easy to follow, and well written.  This looks like another keeper.

Happy Rudolph Day -- and please pass the cookies!

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!

Trying out a potential Christmas cookie recipe

At our May Christmas Club meeting, I shared a thought which had recently occurred to me: one could (weather permitting) try out Christmas cookie recipes in the summer, perhaps adapting them slightly (as I have done with patriotic sprinkles above) to look less Christmasy if necessary.

This idea came to me as I was leafing through some recipes I had saved from the King Arthur Baking catalog.  When I saw the one below, it occurred to me that these cookies could be made patriotic by switching out the peppermint bits for red, white, and blue sprinkles.  I have linked to the recipe here: Hot Cocoa Cookies.

So last week I set out to try it.  I ended up changing quite a few things about the recipe as I didn't have everything on hand that it called for.  I used regular chocolate chips instead of mini; left out the cocoa nibs, and, for the top, used several dark chocolate chips instead of the bittersweet melting disks.  Next time, I will get the disks and I will also use the mini chips instead of regular, because I really think it will make a difference.  I think the disk will give a neater circle of chocolate on the top of the cookie, rather than substituting the four chocolate chips and swirling them around, as I did.

I also shaped the dough into balls because I just think molded cookies look neater than drop cookies, and my cookie scoop would have been too large for this.  I tried to keep the balls of dough about an inch in diameter, but came out with quite a few less cookies than the recipe specified.  I think I got about 3 1/2 dozen.

One unusual ingredient I did have was the espresso powder, which really did add a lovely flavor to the cookies.

I will definitely make these cookies again!  They are delicious, and went over well at the July 4th cookout I took them to.  Have you ever tried out Christmas recipes in July?