Christmas in February

If I was any good at prankery, I would try in earnest to convince you that today is in fact Christmas. It’s April Fools’ Day, after all. But if any truth could be said about me, it would have to be Homer Simpson’s famous line, “You couldn't fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine!”

Sadly, I don’t have anything like an electrified fooling machine (and what I really want is a waffle iron). I guess I’m kind of pranking you with the title “Christmas in February” but, to be honest, today totally feels like February. It’s a snow day, my office is closed, everything in town is shut down because we’re going to get at least 100 feet of snow, and we might not see any signs of spring until next Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, I was so busy during last Christmas that I didn’t get time to write about all of my Christmas makings and bakings during Christmas. Or after Christmas. Or after after Christmas, for that matter. Too many papers, too much work, too much... just much too much. That’s me: much too much. I’m all in, all the time. Why can’t I just be like normal people and not do anything for a change? No, I must make and do ALL of the things. All the cakes, all the crafts, all the cookies, all the fudge, and all of the masters degrees.

Seeing as how I don’t have anything scheduled for today, I decided to make some work for myself by writing one big post that covers my Christmas 2013 treats and post it right at the point when most people have totally forgotten about Christmas. Oh, you’re welcome.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, I made a boatload full of food, including the pie and tarts that I showed you in my last post. FYI, a “boatload” of something is my favourite unit of measurement. I didn’t take photos of everything in the boatload, but I can show you the ones that I did.

Fudge: I forgot to get pictures of my “Everything” fudge (trail mix, cashews, peanuts, almonds, macadamia, pistachios, vanilla cream sandwich cookies, Smarties and M&Ms) and my butterscotch chocolate walnut fudge. But here are photos of my batches of rocky road fudge with mixed nuts and white chocolate candy cane Oreo fudge. 

I just love the look of those big ol' slabs of fudge before they're cut into pieces! By the way, next to “boatload,”  “slab” is my most favourite unit of measurement. The candy cane fudge is made using my favourite Eagle Brand cookies n' cream fudge recipe with candy cane sandwich cookies from Walmart that I call Oreos (or you can use the original Mint Oreos) with chopped candy canes on top.

Cookies: I made some melting snowman chocolate chip cookies and Rudolph oatmeal raisin cookies. 

The melting snowmen were decorated with royal icing to look like melted snow and scotch mints were used for their heads. The reindeers were made using a gingerbread man cookie cutter and decorated upside down. They're decorated with royal icing, chocolate chips for eyes, and a red Smartie for the noses.

Cake pops: After years of following Bakerella’s blog and poring over her books, I finally got over my anxiety and made cake pops for the first time. I made vanilla elves, Christmas trees, and snowmen. It was hard, messy work but totally worth it. After they were completely dry, I packaged them in small, clear cellophane bags secured with a silver twist tie. These photos were taken at night so the lighting is not the best.

I adore the snowmen in their jaunty candy berets! For some reason, the snowmen look very pleased with themselves, like they know they're cute and they’re happy to be here. Those are the kind of snowmen and people I like best: those who are just happy to be wherever they are.

Cupcakes: This year I decided not to do a big decorated cake for Christmas Eve like I usually do but I made cupcakes decorated as little snowy winter scenes instead. These are vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting and homemade marshmallow fondant shapes made by hand and using mini cookie cutters.  I made a variety of little fondant characters and shapes for the scenes including snowmen with scarves blowing in the wind, snowmen wearing hats, snow-covered trees, Christmas gifts, reindeer, and Santa hat-wearing gingerbread men.

In case you’re wondering what I did with this stuff, nearly all the treats were given away as gifts to relatives, my coworkers, my mother’s colleagues, and assorted friends and neighbours. The best part is that I got to sample everything I made.  

I keep saying that next year I’m not making anything, but I already know that I’m going to make another boatload of treats topped off with innumerable slabs of fudge. I'd better start planning.

Cake Break

I needed a break from cake so lately I've been making non-cakey treats

I forgot to take a picture of it, but I made White Chocolate and Macadamia Rocky Road squares. It's funny because what originally inspired me to make these squares was the picture of them on the original recipe site, but mine weren't quite as pretty. I made a few tweaks to the original recipe.  I toasted the macadamia nuts and pistachios (or “smishsmashios” as I like to call them) in the oven first to enhance their nuttiness. Instead of dried cranberries, I used dried cherries that I snipped in half with kitchen scissors. I also used unsweetened coconut because that’s what I had on hand.

The only problem I had with this recipe was the proportion of white chocolate to the other ingredients. I used chocolate chips rather than baking chocolate, which was probably the wrong thing to do. I think it needs about one-third more white chocolate chips (so 180g + 60g = 240 g) in order to get it to set up right.

(I always call pistachios "smishsmashios" because it reminds me of the Ghost of Christmas Present/Willie the Giant in Mickey’s Christmas Carol who can’t pronounce pistachios.)

Still in keeping with my Cake Break, for my birthday supper tonight, which is to celebrate my birthday tomorrow on November 25th, I made two types of brownies: Oreo brownies and chocolate chip cookie dough brownies.

For the Oreo brownies, I mixed some chopped Oreos into the brownie batter. Once the brownies were baked and cooled, I made half a recipe of Wilton's vanilla icing (the same one I always use for cake decorating) and mixed in chopped up Oreos. After spreading the Oreo frosting onto the brownies, I pressed a few pieces of cookie into the top.

And here are the cookie dough brownies.

These are just regular brownies with walnuts that, after they cooled, were frosted with a chocolate chip cookie dough frosting, which was made according to this recipe.  I used half vegetable shortening and half butter, regular sized chocolate chips, and I doubled the vanilla.

I used brownie mixes rather than make them from scratch. I find that the boxed brownies mixes always give the best results. I’ve tried several brownie recipes from scratch and they never turn out right.

And finally, because I didn’t want a total Cake Break, I made birthday cake fudge, also known as cake batter fudge.

It gets its name from the fact that it uses boxed cake mix in the recipe. I followed this recipe but I added an extra bit of milk (about 2 tablespoons) and a half teaspoon of clear vanilla extract.

I didn’t think I could find a new favourite fudge recipe but cake batter fudge totally takes the cake. No, let me rephrase that: It takes the cake and the fudge. All of it! It takes all the cake, all the fudge, and everything there is and ever was times infinity it's so good.

I think the only way to improve upon it would be to add gumdrops to make….GUMDROP CAKE FUDGE! Oh, man. That’s the sort of dangerousness that comes from thinking. I'm going to stop that now before I get myself into trouble.

Christmas 2011: Part 2

And now, after Part 1, it's time for Part 2 of my Christmas 2011 busyness in which I outline the other goodies that I made to eat and/or give away as gifts.

A Chocolate Butterscotch Rocky Road Fudge Wreath.




I made this as a last minute dessert for a small get-together to watch Christmas shows on TV. It was made with leftover odds and ends, like semi-sweet chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, marshmallows, and salted mixed nuts. I added some Smarties to the top for colour. (I’ve been putting Smarties on just about everything lately. I like their colours better than M&Ms.) I made it according (roughly) to this Rachael Ray recipe for a five-minute fudge wreath. It's very simple. I used a 6-inch round cake pan and a can of mushrooms covered in foil and sprayed with Pam to make the hole in the center. For something that was thrown together at the last minute it was really, really good.

It was so easy and so good, in fact, that a couple nights later I made another fudge wreath for a Christmas party thrown by my coworker.


This one is a dark chocolate rocky road fudge wreath. For decoration I made some holly and berries using red Smarties and green spice drops that were snipped in half with scissors and molded by hand to look like leaves. I wrapped it up and made a nice little gift out of it.



I used the remaining rocky road fudge to make a Christmas tree.


Remember my Christmas Tree Cake from my last post? It was baked in two foil tree-shaped pans that came with plastic lids, so I used one of the lids lined with plastic wrap to make this fudge tree. Originally, I only intended to have plain Smarties on top, but then I put on a dusting of powdered sugar “snow” and multicoloured nonpareil sprinkles. It looks pretty either way.


The fudge tree was cut into squares and half of them were put on a small plate along with some big gumdrops to give to a relative. The remaining fudge was kept for my family's Christmas Eve dinner.

I also made Nigella Lawsons’s recipe for bar nuts to make a savoury snack mix to bring to my coworker's party.


I changed a few things in the recipe: I used brown sugar rather than muscovado; rather than plain unsalted butter I used garlic butter that I had made ahead of time for another purpose (unsalted butter, fresh grated garlic, salt, pepper, and parsley); I put in only 1 tablespoon of chopped rosemary; I added a half teaspoon of garlic powder; and my nut mixture was about three-quarters salted peanuts in addition to some pecans, walnuts and cashews, so I reduced the salt in the mix down to a half teaspoon. Before packaging the nuts to bring to the party, I added a couple handfuls of small pretzel rods.

Marshmallow Snowmen.



I based them on this recipe. I used royal icing to put on the black nonpareils for the eyes, halved some orange and black round sprinkles with a knife to look like carrot noses and coal mouths, and used coloured round sprinkles for buttons. Flattened red spice drops were used for the bases of the hats with a green spice drop smooshed on top. I love the expressions on their faces. They look as if they’re trying to make the best of a bad situation by apprehensively singing a Christmas carol together as they await their inevtiable fate of being eaten by a small, hungry child.


I wrapped them up just like the fudge wreath above and the plate of cookies in my last post so that they could be given as a gift to my 5-year-old cousin.

A tray of gingerbread men who, unlike the snowmen above, look genuinely happy to be here.


I made back in November to decorate my Christmas Eve cake, which you'll get to see in a moment. I just wanted to introduce them here to build the suspense! Heh. The tray is an old Christmas tray that my mother had for years and had put away in storage until I rescued it. It's been beaten up a bit and has scratches on it from years of use, but it reminds me of all of my great Christmas memories from childhood, which is why I continue to use it and cherish it.

At the last minute today I decided to make some mint chocolate truffles roughly based on this Kraft recipe, which I've used several time before.



I made the base truffle mixture as directed in the recipe, but I had to substitute chopped unsweetened chocolate and icing sugar because I was out of semisweet chocolate chips. I also added some peppermint flavouring so they're super minty like a candy cane. I covered some truffles in Christmas-coloured nonpareil sprinkles and the others in a sparkly mixture of regular and purple sanding sugar. And like most everything I've made this year, I packaged some and gave them away as a last-minute gift.



Here's my Christmas Eve Cheese Tray, which is becoming an annual Christmas tradition.





I made my olive cream cheese penguins and a cheeseball Christmas tree again like last year. Instead of making a cheeseball igloo, however, this year I made cheeseball snowmen. Rather than use the Philadelphia Herb and Garlic Cream Cheese as I have in past years, this year I made the basic cheeseball mix for the tree and snowmen myself from scratch with softened cream cheese, garlic, herbs, salt and pepper, and toasted walnuts and pecans. The Christmas tree cheeseball has bacon bits and cheddar cheese added to about two-thirds of the mix and is covered in dill with pieces of carrot and red pepper for ornaments. The snowmen are made from the remaining basic cheeseball mix with parmesan cheese and a bit of finely grated cheddar added. They have small pretzel rods for arms, carrots for noses, olive eyes, and red pepper and olive hats. I used small cookie and fondant cutters and a knife to cut stars, half-moons, hearts, triangles, circles, reindeer, flowers, and leaves from cheddar, mozzarella, and marble cheeses, and processed cheese slices.

And last but not least, here is what will likely be my final baking project of 2011. Behold my Christmas Eve Cake!





This cake is based on Wilton’s Very Merry Go Round Cake. It’s a small 6-inch chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream filling and icing, with vanilla buttercream accents. The cake is decorated with my homemade regular and mini-sized gingerbread men, candy canes, starlight mints, gumdrops, and other festive candies.

And now with nothing left to make or bake or wrap up or fuss over, I'm going to go and enjoy what's left of Christmas Eve by spending time with my family and trying not to obsess over what I'm going to make for next Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas 2011: Part 1

Because I am short on time but long on baking and crafting updates during this hectic week before Christmas, I’m going to do my best (and probably fail miserably, anyway, despite my best intentions) to be brief. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m giving away my felt ornaments, cookies, and other treats as gifts this year, and I also made some treats for holiday social gatherings. I have a few pictures to share so that you can see what I’ve been talking about and working on.

Felt cupcakes and gingerbread houses, which I packaged in my handmade paper bags.



I designed the templates for the cupcakes myself. I used a gingerbread house pattern from the book Fa La La La Felt but modified it slightly to make peaked roofs on some houses.

Shortbread cookies. I made classic rounds and fingers, little Scottie dogs, and some chocolate chip shortbread bites.


Shortbread cookie dough is really hard to work with, mainly because the classic recipe that I used called for just flour, sugar, butter and a pinch of salt, so there wasn’t much to bind it all together. Maybe I need to play with the proportions a bit the next time or add a drop of cold water so that everything stays together when the dough is rolled out.

Cookies decorated with royal icing. I made chocolate sugar cookies (Christmas trees and blue snowflakes), sugar cookies flavoured with fresh orange zest (mittens and doves), and gingerbread snowflakes (the pink ones).



Some cookies have a shimmery look from the Wilton Pearl Dust that I brushed on after the royal icing dried and hardened. Pearl Dust is one of my favourite decorating products ever, and I now have the colours white, green and pink among my baking supplies.

I also used this cute Wilton Gingerbread Village Cookie Pan to make houses from the orange sugar cookie dough and the gingerbread cookie dough.


You just press the dough into the cavities in the pan and when the cookies are baked, the outlines of the house features are baked in to the cookies, which makes them easy to decorate. I decorated the houses with royal icing, sprinkles and small candies.

In total, I made about 5 dozen decorated cookies, and about 2 dozen shortbread cookies. Most of the cookies that I made were given away but I reserved some for Christmas. It’s so easy to put a bunch on a holiday-themed paper plate, curl a bit of ribbon, and make it into a pretty gift.


Rather than use the cellophane on the roll to wrap up the cookies, I used a plastic gift basket bag. I bought a pack of the right-sized bags for my paper plate at Michaels in the gift wrapping section, put the plate in the bottom of a bag, filled it with cookies, and then cinched it closed with the ribbon. Easy peasy, especially when you’re tired and covered in royal icing and cookie crumbs and so not in the mood to wrestle with a roll of clingy, stubborn cellophane.

I also made snack mix, which consists of spiced pecan and walnut halves (I doubled this amazing recipe that I found on AllRecipes); 1 bag of Ocean Spray Craisins, or you can substitute an equivalent amount of some other sweetened dried cranberries or even cherries, or any other dried fruit that you like. I bet candied orange peel dipped in chocolate would be nice, too, but then you’d have to make the candied orange peel ahead of time. Here's a photo of the nuts and cranberries mixed together.


I packaged a small amount of snack mix in individual serving-sized plastic bags and made the tags from the same paper from the pad that I used to make the ornament gift bags. I put about a ¼ cup of the nut/cranberry mixture into each bag and threw in a few mini reindeer, gingerbread man, and star cookies that were made using a teeny cookie cutters when I made my bigger cookies. I finished each bag with a few store-bought milk chocolate-covered pretzels. Then I came up with the clever name “Heather’s Snack Mix” to write on the label.



Yeah, the muses did a great job of inspiring my original snack mix creation but they really let me down in the snack mix-naming department. Oh well.

Cookies and Cream fudge made from this Eagle Brand recipe.



I only made a third of the recipe due to its serious habit-forming properties. The combination of white chocolate and Oreos is extremely addictive. This pan of fudge, seen uncut in the first photo above, was made for a work Christmas party.

Chocolate and Butterscotch fudge made from another Eagle Brand recipe.


I made half the recipe and added crunchy toffee bits to the top as the butterscotch chips were kind of clumpy and wouldn’t melt completely smooth, so I wanted to camouflage that a bit. Toasting the walnuts before chopping them and adding them to the melted chocolate base gives what would normally be a simple sweet fudge a more complex flavour. It’s kind of a boring looking two-layer fudge when it’s just on a regular plate but it looks much more impressive in this snazzy green snowflake tin, which I filled with two layers of the fudge and then gave away as a gift.



My Christmas tree cake, which was also made for the aforementioned work Christmas party.






It’s a two-layer vanilla cake with chocolate buttercream filling and is decorated with vanilla buttercream. I used Smarties, mini gingerbread man cookies, silver dragrees, and snowflake and star quins as tree “ornaments.” The star on top is actually a mini gingerbread cookie that I covered in gold buttercream. I added a few yellow star quins as an afterthought because the icing made the star look too lumpy.

And here is the link to see my gallery of my Christmas tree and festive living room decorations. Before you go and watch the slideshow, I want to draw your attention to one thing in particular:


It's my Chip and Dale ornament that I bought in Walt Disney World when I was there last December. When I was little, I loved the Disney Christmas cartoon where Pluto chases Chip and Dale around Mickey's living room as Mickey is busy decorating for the holidays. The two chipmunks get into the Christmas tree and walk awestruck around the branches amidst the bright lights and shiny bulbs, admiring the colourful view. I can still vividly remember watching that and longingly wishing to be small enough to walk around inside the branches of a lit Chrsitmas tree. I'd give anything to be able to walk around inside my tree this year, which, in addition to all of my sparkly, funky, and sentimental decorations from Ye Olden Tymes, looks especially pretty with the new "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" tree skirt that my mother made for me.

I am nearing the end of my 2011 holiday treat and gift making/packaging frenzy. If you’re feeling exhausted just reading about the amount of things I’ve made this year, you’re not alone. The thing is, I enjoy making things so much that it doesn’t feel like work while I’m engrossed in it. It’s not until after I'm finished when I am completely wiped out that I realize how much work I put into everything. But the results are worth it.

Now I only have one cake left to make for Christmas Eve dinner and then I am imposing a moratorium on baking for at least a month. Actually, I sort of already promised someone a St. Patrick’s Day cake. Do you think I can hold off until March? Yeah, me neither.