Two-Tone Cinnamon Cookies

I saw a photo of these cookies and thought they would be something different to add to our sweets menu. They are pretty, it looked like fun to make the swirl patterns, and how can you go wrong with cinnamon?

http://www.bhg.com/recipe/cookies/two-tone-cinnamon-cookies

I also made Christmas Tree star cookies, a LOT of other cut-out squares and rounds from the leftover cookie dough, the Elegant Cream Cheese mints and the ever popular White RumChata Fudge Bites. That recipe is available in the archives and is the single most popular recipe that is searched on this blog!

I think I’ll call it quits for tonight!

More Candy and Cookies

Yesterday I got quite a bit accomplished. I baked Snickerdoodles, Best Ever Gingersnaps, Spiced Almond Wafers, and Chocolate Cherry Checkerboard cookies. I also unmolded the White Chunky Chocolates and made Almond Roca Candy, White Christmas Candy, and Peanut Butter Chews. (Recipes available for all of these in the archive.)
The tins and containers are stacking up.

I tried a new candy recipe, Maker’s Mark Bourbon Fudge. We visited the distillery in Kentucky a couple of years ago and I picked up a cookbook there that had this easy recipe:

Maker’s Mark Bourbon Fudge

1 (12-ounce) package semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup Maker’s Mark Bourbon
1/2 tsp. orange extract
1 (3/4-ounce) package slivered almonds

Combine chocolate chips and sweetened condensed milk in a large bowl and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Cook in microwave for 3 minutes on high. Remove from microwave and stir until smooth. Add bourbon and orange extract; mix well. Grease an 8-inch square pan and sprinkle the bottom of the pan with the almons. Pour mixture in pan and let stand until firm or chill in the refrigerator

I let it chill for several hours and it was still very soft when I cut it. I would recommend keeping it refrigerated. This morning after church and a late breakfast at home I mixed up the Buckeye centers and they are about to go in the freezer to chill for dipping in chocolate later.

Now, it’s on to more candy and cut-out cookies this afternoon.

The Countdown Begins

Today the countdown to our annual Christmas Open House begins!

I took off work to do all of the holiday baking and cooking and I refer to it as my “marathon”. The shopping actually started on Veteran’s Day when Kevin was off of school and I took a day off, too. We headed Columbia, Missouri Monday night to get a head start the next day. We woke up, had a quick breakfast and headed to Burger’s Smokehouse in California, Missouri and the new Dutch Bakery in Tipton to get bulk food and smokehouse meats for the buffet. The new and improved Dutch Bakery is very nice. It’s bigger and the aisles are well organized. Because it was a new layout, it took a little longer to find what I needed, but we checked a lot off of the 3-page single-spaced typed shopping. list.

On Black Friday, I don’t go to the electronics or big box store – we head to the Hill! We went to Viviano’s Italian Grocery, The Global Market , Sam’s Club and Randalls’ , touted as St. Louis’s #1 Liquor Store.

Then we had to unload the van…..

Once everything was unpacked I started making cookie dough so that it could chill overnight. Went to bed about 11:30 p.m. This morning I woke up early and started making more dough. My goal today is to get most of the cookies done and some of the candy. Friday morning I made the White Chocolate Chunky candy (recipe available in the archives) and it is chilling in the refrigerator
For now it’s back to making cookie dough…….

Too Many Bananas

The countdown has begun and this weekend we were doing deep cleaning of our house for the holidays. Today we had Thanksgiving dinner at my Mom and Dad’s house, which officially ushers in the start of the holiday season for me and my family. I made a Pumpkin Cheesecake to take for our feast, but it split a crack in it the size of the San Andreas fault so I’m electing not to share that recipe or photos. My husband saw a recipe in a Taste of Home magazine for Banana Eggnog Bread. At first I thought that sounded pretty awful, but he convinced me to give it a try. I made a loaf last week and it is actually excellent! It has a nice texture and you can really taste the eggnog. It has nutmeg both in the batter and sprinkled on top so that nutty flavor comes through. We put a couple of slices in our toaster and had them with breakfast yesterday morning. It was so good, I’m making a couple of loaves tonight. We stopped by the grocery store and I guessed at how many bananas we needed for the recipe to double it and went over considerably. So, I’m making a loaf for Kevin to take to school for the teachers to snack – on it’s Parent Teacher conferences Monday and Tuesday. I’ll take the other loaf to my work, but still I had enough mashed bananas to make another batch. There was also quite a bit of eggnog left. I decided to make mini loaves for our Holiday Open House. I’ll let them cool, wrap them in parchment paper and put them in Ziplock freezer bags. I’ll defrost them a day before the party and they will be fine. The small slices will be the perfect size for a taste, or two.

Banana Eggnog Bread

1 stick butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed bananas (that’s about 2 medium bananas)
1/4 cup eggnog
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. freshly-grated nutmeg – divided use
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. baking soda

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a large stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time. Beat well after each addition. Add the mashed bananas, eggnog and vanilla. Scrape the sides of the bowl to combine ingredients thoroughly. In another bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, 1/4 tsp. nutmeg, salt and baking soda. Gradually beat into the banana mixture. Spray 1 9 x 5-inch loaf pan or 6 mini loaf pans with baking no-stick cooking spray with flour. Pour batter in the prepared pan(s). I used a jumbo muffin cup scoop that I found a Michael’s Craft Store to divide the batter up evenly for the mini loaf pans and it was perfect.
Bake the 9 x 5-inch pan for 50-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes our clean. Reduce bake time for the mini loaves to 30-40 minutes. Cool in pans about 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely. If you like sweet breads, you will enjoy this one. This is also a good bread to bake for people who don’t like nuts and it certainly is a good recipe to bake during the holidays. It’s not too soon to start! I know I will be doing a great deal of baking and cooking in the next two weeks and will be blogging often. It’s my busiest time of the year and I am excited to be trying some new recipes for this year’s open house!

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