Christmas, New Years, and Life

Ok, I know I said I would get a post up a few days after Christmas, but I kinda forgot about the crazy cleaning that takes place between Christmas and New Years, and then forgot about the mess we always make for sauerkraut and pork. Especially when we get to have a bunch of people over! I loved every second of it too. Well except for when my lemon meringue pie didn't set up, and I had to run to the store to get a dessert while everyone was still sitting at the house :(. I'm putting off the cleaning from New Year's Day to work on this (shame on me, I'm being a bad housewife)

Christmas went well, we missed a few people due to colds, and work, but most of us were there. We had Christmas dinner at my mother-in-laws house, and OH MY GOD that ham was delicious!! I ate way more than I should have, but it was all so tasty!! I have to get the recipe from her for these cookies called Angel Squares I think. I like them better than rum balls and coconut macaroons, and if you know me...well that's saying something.

So now let's back track a little to the Saturday before Christmas, and Katie's birthday bowling bash! I made Lemon Curd Coconut Cupcakes and they seemed to be quite a hit. Of course I forgot to take my usual gazillion pictures until after they were half gone....

Lemon Curd Coconut Cupcakes

nothing to fancy about these, but here's the recipe.
Basic vanilla cake recipe
2 1/2 Cups AP flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 2/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs
3/4 cup whole milk

Mix the flour and baking powder in a bowl. In another bowl, beat sugar, butter, and vanilla until smooth and fluffy (it's very important to make sure there are no chunks of butter, as that will make a gooey under-baked mess). Add eggs one at a time, beating until well combined. Add flour and milk alternately in two additions, beating until just blended. Pour into cupcake tins line with paper, and bake at 325º about 20 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.

Let cool, then fill a pastry bag with Lemon Curd. You can buy some at the store, or make it yourself. If you make it yourself, I find that the Lemon filling for a lemon meringue pie works beautifully. If you don't know how to make that, check out Betty Crocker Classic Lemon Meringue for the filling. Using a large tip (or the one made for filling), squeeze lemon curd into the center of each cupcake until you start to feel the cupcake swell. If some oozes out, just spread it on top and let it air dry so the icing will stick.

For the icing:
1 1/2 cup coconut flakes
3 TBsp butter, softened
8 oz marscapone cheese
2 2/3 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp Vanilla

Combine and beat all ingredients until smooth. This icing is too soft to really do anything fancy with, so just glop it on top and try not to eat it all before it makes it to the cupcakes.

A big part of our Christmas gifts to everyone this year were cookies! On top of traditional chocolate chip cookies, I made these three

Almond Sugar Cookies

I didn't get any pictures, but I put them in these cute little clear baggies with red stripes and tied them up with ribbon. 

Checkerboard Shortbread Cookies

For the checkerboard cookies, I'll have to do the recipe with lots of pictures showing how to make the cookies at a later time. This post is already going to be ginormous.

Apple-Cinnamon-Raisin-Oatmeal Cookies with Maple Icing

These are by far the most amazing oatmeal cookies I have ever had, and I will be making these again, if I can remember how I did it.







I also made some peppermint fudge, and peppermint bark to give out this year. It was my first time making peppermint bark, and that was an experience in and of itself. I had tried to melt white chocolate for some other cookies I had made, but ended up throwing it all out cause I couldn't get it to melt well, it just seized up. So for peppermint bark I chopped up those Hershey's mint kisses, and spread them on top of milk chocolate I had already melted and poured onto a cookie sheet. In my research for how to melt the white chocolate successfully, I found a video that showed a French Chocolatier using a heat gun during the tempering process. This sparked my imagination, and I pulled out our heat gun. Well, this melted the chopped pieces on top, but to get warm enough to let the top stick to the bottom, the top was browning. So I popped it in the oven for about 10 minutes, and viola! We have peppermint bark!

Melted, and cooled milk chocolate

Chopping an entire bag of Kisses

I also made Peppermint Chocolate Fudge!!

2 pkg semi-sweet Bakers Chocolate squares
1 14oz can sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp peppermint extract

Melt chocolate and milk in double boiler, add peppermint, pour into foil lined pan, cool, cut ENJOY! I sprinkled a little sea salt on which made it absolutely delectable.

I also ended up making coupon name tags for everyone this year. Thanks to Microsoft having all sorts of templates out there, I found some really pretty Christmas themed ones, and printed them out of heavy paper.

Here are a few more things I made for Christmas but won't go too far into detail. 

Lotion Squares (more in my post from 12/1

Body Scrub

Crochet doily for my MIL

Lotion that worked!

Name tags for the sweet treat bags

Vanilla Peppermint Chapstick

Book tote bag for Pam

Tote for Melinda

Tote for Dd

Peppermint swirl cheesecake!

Well that's it for now, I need to get to cleaning so I stop stressing about how bad the house looks. I'll be back later with a post on mess free soy candles, so stay tuned.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and a Happy New Year.