It's the Hap-Hapiest Season of All

Christmas is undoubtedly my favorite time of year. There's so much to enjoy and to do from decorating the tree, decorating the house, enjoying a plethora of Christmas movies, making homemade gifts (a tradition in our home), putting gingerbread houses together, wrapping presents, Christmas parties, get-togethers and events. You have so many more opportunities to reach out into you community in some way, and people are for the most more giving and kind than any other time of the year. And of course, let's not forget the food. The cookies, the candy, the egg nog, Christmas Eve dinner for my family (with my Dad's birthday on Christmas Eve), Christmas morning goodies, and finally Christmas Dinner. Yes, my jeans are groaning as I write this. 

The only problem (if you even want to call it that) that arises with the holidays is there just is never enough time to try and squeeze in absolutely everything you want to do or try. I probably have a list of a hundred different peppermint Christmas treats I want to try, not to mention dozens of cookies and candy recipes. There is just no time to try every new holiday recipe and still enjoy the holidays. I guess sometimes, you can either just choose to settle with only three types of Christmas candy (instead of seven), or you could throw in a couple of these quick Christmas Candy treats. 

I’m not sure why, but I have never made peppermint bark. Never. I’ve enjoyed it plenty over the past few Christmas holidays, but never actually made it myself. So, over the weekend we were booked with Christmas related plans and I thought I would make a batch to tote along on our festivities. Low and behold, when I consulted my trusted candy guide, candy thermometer laid out and ready to go, I quickly discovered that this is probably the easiest candy in the world to make. The hardest part is probably breaking up the candy canes. It's so easy, in fact, that at Daniel's suggestion for an additional version, I quickly whipped up this "Egg Nog Bark" to enjoy as well. Safe for the kiddies, don't worry. 

Peppermint Bark

1 12 oz bag white chocolate

About 3 regular sized candy canes, crushed

½ tsp peppermint extract

1.      1. Line baking sheet or glass baking dish with wax paper.

2.      2. Carefully melt chocolate (over low heat or preferably in a double-boiler), being careful not to scorch.

3.      3. Once melted, add peppermint extract and a handful of crushed candy canes (less than half).

4.      4. Carefully pour chocolate mixture on wax paper lined sheet or dish. If necessary, carefully spread to even out slightly. Quickly top with remaining candy cane bits.

5.      5. Allow to set (15-20 minutes). Break apart, and enjoy!

To dress it up, first melt 1 (12 oz) bag of chocolate (milk/dark/semisweet your choice), adding ½ tsp peppermint extract and pour into wax paper lined glass baking dish. Follow above directions, pouring mixture on top of regular chocolate.

 

Egg Nog Bark

1 12 oz bag white chocolate

2 tsp nutmeg, divided*

1 tsp rum flavoring

1.       1. Line baking sheet or glass baking dish with wax paper.

2.      2. Carefully melt chocolate (over low heat or preferably in a double-boiler), being careful not to scorch.

3.      3. Once melted, add rum flavoring and one teaspoon of nutmeg.

4.      4. Carefully pour chocolate mixture on wax paper lined sheet or dish. If necessary, carefully spread to even out slightly. Quickly top with remaining nutmeg, using more or less as desired for appearance.

5.      5. Allow to set (15-20 minutes). Break apart, and enjoy!

6.       

* Typically, I’m a strong proponent of using freshly ground nutmeg. It’s relatively inexpensive and packs a strong flavor. BUT, in this case, because you are going to want to use more for appearance purposes, I would use a high quality ground nutmeg.

Last, but certainly not least, it wouldn’t be Christmas without fudge, and nor would it be Christmas without sharing a family story. Luckily, this recipe will give you both. 

Given my baking and all things sweet addiction, for our first Christmas together as husband and wife I went on a baking extravaganza, making peppermint fudge, chocolate fudge, tons of cookies, and tossing in this super easy peanut butter fudge for a last minute gift for co-workers. Our next Christmas together, on my first day of baking, I did not begin with all three fudges. Instead, I began with my assortment of cookies, and only had time to do a peppermint fudge. My sweet husband comes home and as I show him the gems of my days labor one by one, he looks perplexed and confused. As I show him the peppermint fudge (that is somewhat labor intensive I might add), he responds, “but I like peanut butter fudge.”

So, despite giving him a hard time every year for this incident, every year we also enjoy this super easy, takes-you-longer-to-do-the-dishes-afterward, peanut butter fudge.

5 Minute Peanut Butter Fudge

1/2 cup butter, plus more for greasing pan

1-1/2 cups peanut butter

1/2 cup half & half

2 teaspoons vanilla

2  pounds powdered sugar

1.       1. Grease 10x10 dish with butter.

2.      2. Pour all ingredients into a microwave safe dish.

3.      3. Microwave on high for three minutes.

4.      4. Stir well with a wooden spoon.

5.      5. Pour into prepared dish. Allow to cool and set.

6.      6. Cut and store in between sheets of wax paper in air-tight container.

Enjoy!

Just Laying Around

Don't worry, I do realize Easter's over, and no, I wish I was just laying around lately. I've seen recipes for Momofuku's infamous compost cookie lurking around the last year or so. When I saw them originally I was amused at the novelty, but never got around to trying them. I haven't been to New York since I was a sophomore in high school, which is to say it was a little before Mr.David Chang's time, so, although I love the salty sweet combination, I had never experienced said cookie and was just never motivated to try to make them.

But. While taking a break from writing, reading, and staying awake during my own lectures about the joys of business letters, I came across another version of it from one of my favorite bloggers, and thought, wouldn't that be a fun break to take with some Easter candy. Then Easter came and went (hope everyone had a wonderful holiday by the way). No time for said break. A week of half-off stale Peeps and Easter candy passed. No break. And another...

Luckily for me however, I have the sweetest husband who spent the better part of his day off this week proof reading and editing one of my drafts, leaving me time to bake and blog and say hello. As I headed to the store, passing the coffee shop that has become my permanent reading writing space for the month, I remembered wanting to try these, but felt quite certain no gimmicky deeply-discounted Easter treats would be left. To my surprise though, I did indeed find some left over Easter candy. COOKIE TIME!!

But nonetheless, just in case you aren't familiar with the cookie, the idea is that you throw whatever ingredients you have around (half salty, half sweet), into a very sweet dough, half salty ingredients, half sweet. For mine, I grabbed four different "eggs" filled with candies, that conveniently hold about 1/4 a cup each. Two were pastel M&M's, one with Milk Chocolate eggs, and one with Starburst jelly beans. The chocolate was kind of an obvious choice, other than the candy coating on the eggs being ridiculously hard to try to cut in half. I was torn between peeps and jelly beans to highlight the latent Eater status of the cookie. But then I remembered one of my roomates as an undergrad blowing up discounted post-Easter Peeps in the microwave. I realize its probably totally different, but went with jelly beans nonetheless. I'm not a huge jelly bean fan, but I was hoping by choosing the fruity flavored Starburst ones that I remember my grandmother loved, and the absence of the licorice flavored black beans of death would work well. The salty part was a little trickier. We never have chips or snack food in the house. If we want tortilla chips, nine times out of ten we bake some using corn tortillas. I didn't want to buy three bags or boxes and use only half, but I still wanted some variety of textures (most people use a combination of chips, pretzels and cracker). I ended up opting for a bag of Chex Mix and just crushing it all up as best I could. It worked.

We have yet to purchase or check-out David Chang's book yet, so I don't have the actual recipe. Looking through a bunch of blogs, I found a ton of variations; some much more complicated; some for people trying to make a harder/softer version. Our preference is a softer cookie, which is what you'll get following something like this:.

Compost Cookie
3/4 Cup Butter
3/4 Cup Dark Brown Sugar
1/4 Cup White Sugar
1 Egg
1 Tbsp Vanilla
1-1/2 Cup All Purpose Flour
1/2 Cup Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
1 Tsp Baking Soda
1-1/2 Cups Crushed Salty Ingredients
1 Cup Sweet Ingredients
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Cream butter and sugars until pale brown and creamy. Add vanilla and egg, mix well until fluffy. 
3. In a separate bowl, combine flours and baking soda. Add salty and sweet ingredients to flours, mixing lightly to incorporate.
4. Add dry ingredient to wet. Stir to combine. Cover dough and refrigerate 10-15 minutes. Meanwhile, line baking sheet with non-stick mat or parchment paper.
5. Remove from fridge, drop by rounded tablespoons onto prepared baking sheet leaving 1 inch around. 
6. Bake 8-10 minutes until golden brown color. Remove from oven let cool 2-3 minutes. Let cookies cool completely on a cooling rack.

This is probably a much more timid first attempt, and although these are quite honestly the weirdest cookies I've ever made, I already have three much more daring and creative variations in mind to try. Not only should these work as a nice thank you for someone who you are deeply indebted to as I am, but would work well to get rid of any extra snacks or candy you may have laying around. Enjoy!