December 9, 2011

I can hardly believe there are only 16 days left until Christmas.  I am going to my friends annual Christmas Cookie Exchange tomorrow morning.  She and I and our husbands are getting together tonight and the guys are cooking us steaks on the grill while we do our baking.  I am making what I call cow pies which is the no bake chocolate oatmeal cookie.  These are my husbands favorites and the favorite of a lot of people.  I made these for our cake auction at church and they got a bid of $75 for one batch of them.  I am also making cracker candy.  This is another easy one to make.  It is also pretty cheap to make.  The ingredients are Premium Saltines, butter, sugar and Hershey's chocolate chips.  This is another favorite at our church and it brought a $70 bid at the auction.  I will be doing my Christmas baking the week before Christmas and I make these two things as well as a lot of other stuff.  I do this baking and then make gift boxes of goodies for our friends and family.  This year I made my own goodie boxes instead of buying them.  I had a ton of the plastic containers from the Chinese restaraunt so I took those and got some nice Christmas stickers and decorated them myself.  Some of them I accented with glitter glue.  I was very pleased with how they turned out.  It cost me a total of two bucks for the stickers at Walmart.

I love my annual day of baking goodies and Ronnie loves it too cause he gets to sample.  I have been making a from scratch Oatmeal Raisin cookie since I was 12 years old.  I have made them every year.  It started out as something I would make for my Daddy every year and he passed when I was 18 so I kept on making them for my brothers and Grandpa.  I have lost one of my brothers and my Grandpa in the last ten years but I still make these cookies every year to give out with the goodies in honor of my Daddy, Jeff and Grandpa.  They loved these cookies so much.

I also make a Chocolate dipped Bugles and that is one that my Mama insists on me making every year.  That is her favorite.  They are very easy.  You just melt Hershey's Chocolate Chips in a double boiler and dip the Bugles in the chocolate.  It is the perfect combo of salt and sweet.

I also make Haystacks with the Chinese Noodles and Planters Cocktail Peanuts and Hershey's chocolate chips and Butterscotch chips.  I prefer to use the Hershey's brand because they melt better for me.  I have tried the store brand at Walmart but they don't melt as good.

I make pretzel and peanut almond bark as well.  I just melt the white almond bark in a double boiler and then pour it over Rold Gold Pretzel Sticks and Planters Cocktail Peanuts and then mix it all together and spoon or pour it out on Reynold's Aluminum Foil to cool.

This year I am trying out a new candy that I saw on Pintrest and I want to make it because it is cute.  You melt white chocolate chips or almond bark and pour small little circles of it on Reynolds foil and then you put a yellow M&M on it and two Rold Gold Pretzel sticks and let it cool.  This looks like bacon and eggs when you are done and it is adorable.

I guess that is all for now.  I have to get busy so I can get out of here and run some errands and then go to Dana's house to start our baking.  If you would like any of these recipes please feel free to comment and give me an email address I can send it to. 

Merry Christmas!!!!!