Christmas Treats

One of the best things about Christmas is undoubtedly the food! I eagerly await Matt’s mom Laurel’s Christmas baking every year. She starts about two weeks before Christmas and from then until New Years its a steady flow of peppermint bark, lemon squares and shortbread to list a few. I tried one of Laurel’s recipes for the Krysmatts party and it came out beautifully! Her delicious Gingery Ginger Cake. A wonderful ginger cake is perfect for the season and I ended up making two more after the first one! It is a very Christmasy cake and is so great with a warm cup of coffee.

I made some Christmas cookies as well. I found a really good recipe for soft sugar cookies awhile back and since I found it, I haven’t made any other kind of cookie. Iced or plain, it is pretty much the most awesome cookie in the world!

Check out the recipe here! In addition to the cookies, I also made some chocolates which I am glad to say looked beautiful around the dessert table at Krysmatts.

Melting down the chocolate

I also wanted to try a really cool looking idea with candy mints. You basically melt down candy mints on parchment paper to create a candy mint tray on which to serve your desserts! Seems like a super easy and cool idea right?

My coworker was the first person to mention this idea to me as she saw it on “The Chew”. I found an easy tutorial here and used that to try out my own melted candy mint tray. It totally didn’t work out for me the first time I tried. I got a little distracted and left the mints in the oven a wee bit too long. I made a huge melty mess and nothing that even slightly resembled the pics in the tutorial. I was not to be swayed however, and decided to try again. Second time around I was a lot more time conscious, but didn’t catch them at the right melting point either.

Close but no cigar on the minty candy tray

I was getting ready to give up when I figured I would try one last time, I was determined to get it right! I was sooo close this time, but still, my candy mint tray was not to be. Huge fail on this one. I still have quite a few mints left though, so I may or may not try again at some point when I get over the sting of defeat.

I have been pretty reckless with my eating habits this Christmas (actually, every Christmas). Matt and I have been feasting on all kinds of treats so come January it will definitely be time for a cleanse, but until then it’s cookies, carbs, and lovely Christmas cocktails! Merry Christmas everyone!