Category: Holidays

Seasonal Treats

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I LOVE a seasonal treat.

There’s something special about making a treat or meal that is tied to a time of year. Peanut butter eggs taste better than peanut butter cups. Pumpkin pie is a key November staple. Peppermint ALL DAY in December, right? These times are special.

I love walking down Target’s seasonal section looking for baking ingredients or serving vessels/bags. When I was scrolling through my Instagram Grid recently I noticed that the Easter vibe was SO present. It made me wonder if other holidays were the same.

They were!

Let’s take a tour of some of the more recent holiday/seasonal times with a look at “the ‘gram,” AKA what my Instragram grid looked like at these time periods.

This is basically a guided tour of The Louvre… but food pics. You’re welcome.

Fall/Thanksgiving

This time was full of pumpkin. Somehow I did not do many Halloween treats. I realized after some investigation that this was because I was having pretty bad depression in October. When my mood stabilized in November (thanks Zoloft!), I hit Turkey Day running.

I made my first pie crust from scratch. It was wicked good, but my pie plate was a little too large so the crust was not substantial.

I am not sure why that recipe was a liar, but I took it personally… just like MJ in basically every 5 minutes of The Last Dance (Bad Boys 4 Life). To redeem myself, I doubled the recipe next time to make a Buttermilk Pie for my Bobcat BFF Jess.

Christmas Time

During Christmas I was hyper-focused on mailable treats. But I also made a Yule Log cake for me and Jon. He is not a “cake person,” but loves a Red Velvet with Cream Cheese frosting. I make holiday cakes in that flavor combo so I am not eating cake alone. This theme will pop up again for Easter.

The pic on the bottom left was the first Panettone we’d ever eaten. I turned it into french toast because of course I did. I also made round foods, pork, and rice for the new year because, as Michael Scott once said “I’m not superstitious, but I’m a little stitious.”

Valentine’s Day

This is easily my favorite baking holiday. I truly do not care about Valentine’s Day (or Sweetest Day for that matter). But I love pink and hearts and sparkles and THIS HOLIDAY HAS EVERYTHING.

I’ve always loved the classic foil heart-shaped box of chocolates, so I made several treats you could create to fill the box. I also recommend eating the chocolates as you make the new stuff because you deserve chocolates, too! The waffle on the top left was for Galentine’s Day, a Leslie Knope tradition.

Easter/Spring

This is the most recent holiday I baked and make delish foods for. I made cake popcicles for the first time (which Jon dubbed “the personal pan pizza of cakes”). This was made using the red velvet/cream cheese frosting combo so he would share with me. I was going to make carrot cake ones, but he said he didn’t like carrot cake (narrator: but he did).

I have realized while planning this post that there aren’t a lot of good food holidays coming up. Basically the next good one (in my opinion) is Halloween. So what can I celebrate until then?

  • Pretzel Day (yes, office fans that’s on April 26th)
  • Apple Pie Day (May 13th)
  • Donut Day (June 4th)
  • Ice Cream Day (June 7th)
  • Eat Your Vegetables Day (June 17th)
  • Strawberry Sundae Day (July 7th)
  • French Fry Day (July 13th)
  • Milk Chocolate Day (July 28th)
  • Chocolate Chip Cookie Day (August 4th)
  • Potato Day (August 19th… and every other day imo)
  • Waffle Day (August 24th)
  • Cheeseburger Day (September 18th)
  • Queso Day (September 20th)
  • Ice Cream Cone Day (September 22nd)
  • Coffee Day (September 29th)
  • Cinnamon Roll Day (October 4th)
  • Pierogi Day (October 8th)
  • Cake Decorating Day (October 10th)
  • Day of the Nacho (October 21st)

These “national holidays” were found on the internet. For all I know someone threw darts at a dartboard then made the site, but damned if I won’t celebrate NATIONAL POTATO DAY.

Which one would you celebrate?

XO,

Post-Easter Protein Muffins!

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Why, hello dear readers! I am (once again) sharing a trick my cousin Nikki taught me long ago- you can use leftover holiday candy and PUT IT IN PANCAKES! I showed you how to do that with a waffle for my Galentine’s Day post. Today, I will show you how to sneak some delish leftover candy into some protein muffins.

Collagen Protein Muffins

The muffins in this recipe are featuring ingredients from both Kodiak and NuNaturals. They also showcase the various baking items my mom sent our way! Check this out:

How cute is that latte covered in easter sprinkles!?

I digress… I used the bunny ears, sprinkles, baking cups, and mini eggs in this recipe. I also modified Kodiak’s recipe on the box (below) and cut it in half as well because there are just two of us. It made six muffins.

I used the following for six muffins:

The only sort of finesse to this recipe was mashing the banana separately and adding it second to last. The Collagen from NuNaturals added some extra protein and the NuNaturals vanilla syrup added a subtle sweet note. The last item was the crushed mini eggs. I put them in a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes. Here are some process pictures:

You may have noticed that the adorable eggs (bottom left) looked wicked sad when they were baked (second from left on bottom). Since chocolates are baking duct tape, I just plopped a NEW egg on top of the baked eggs whilst they were cooling. And added bunny ears. I also ate the ugliest one so it did not feel bad about missing the photo shoot. It was delightful.

Easter Picnic Fun

Speaking of “delightful,” I promised to share how our Easter picnic went! Well, we had to change plans a bit. The Easter Bunny got my husband a Covid Vaccine! So we moved the picnic to Saturday…. which was rainy. We decided to eat our meal in the house and enjoy our dessert on the back porch with our cat Champion (he’s allowed out on a leash… yes, you read that correctly).

Here’s the delish Easter spread (I was able to do open-faced Grinder sammies since we were at home, so that was a plus!).

The bottom left is our “Easter pic” we sent to family while waiting for Jon’s vaccine appointment. The right is proof of our porch picnic, where we ate cakecicles and Champ mostly sniffed the air suspiciously.

If you want to know more about these ADORBS cakecicles we enjoyed, here are a few pics and a reel I shared of the process on Instagram!

As you can see on the pic on the left, there were some “happy accidents” as Bob Ross would say. So instead of painting happy little trees over them I covered the cracks with white chocolate and sprinkles, which is basically a baker’s version of… say it with me…. bakers’ duct tape.

Happy Easter if you celebrate! Happy Peanut Butter Egg season if you don’t!

XO,

(I don’t know what is scarier- carrying a purse with the carpet pattern from The Shining so close to a topiary bunny or admitting to the masses that I exclusively eat black jellybeans… they are the best jellybean.)

Easter Picnic!

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Many moons ago my husband and I had a chill picnic whilst gazing at Lady Bird Lake. It was one of my favorite memories from when we lived on the east side. This year we have decided to have a picnic in Zilker! I am insanely excited to make something rad.

I will share pics of our Zilker picnic next week, but wanted to share some fun ideas BEFORE the holiday in case you’re socially distanced from your fam and looking for something fun to do this weekend.

Deviled Eggs

Fun Fact: In Lancaster County PA these are called “daisy eggs.” I assume this is because of the high Mennonite population. It has been a minute since I dyed eggs for Easter, so naturally I did that first:

After this adorbs photo sesh, I peeled these eggs and used two remaining tablets for dying the egg whites. This particular kit (from Target) had a purple and pink tablet that did not need vinegar to dye eggs. So I saved those to dye the whites without having a weird vinegar taste (also I feel like pickled eggs have a strange texture to them).

Here is my IKEA pictures only explanation of the process:

I made the filling in a food processor. It was the yolks, some Sir Kensington’s special sauce, low fat mayo and a squirt of mustard. I will probably add capers when eating them, but check out this SAVED BY THE BELL REALNESS:

Amazing, if I do say so myself. 🙂

Where my Peeps at?!

I also decided to make peeps. I don’t love peeps. They are not my fave Easter candy. But I do think they are adorable. So I decided to make my own with a twist. I made meringue cookie bird peeps and homemade marshmallow bunny peeps!

The meringue cookies were made using this recipe and watching videos of people pipe peeps. The pink bunnies were made with this recipe (I subbed NuNaturals sweetener for their liquid stevia). I am still perfecting the texture on this one and will make a post on marshmallows with NuNaturals once it is perf. Until then, you can watch this reel of how these were made.

Easter Picnic Amazingness!

As we discussed, dear reader, am planning an Easter Picnic! I decided to have a photo shoot of my dream spread for funzies (and blogzies):

I think my favorite part of this picnic was eating a lunch made from these ingredients afterwards. 🙂

Some of these items will make the Zilker picnic spread, but others will not because of travel purposes. The last picnic we did was on Lady Bird Lake when we lived a 5 minute walk away. This weekend we will walk quite a bit to the location, so it means I have to be more savvy with my menu choices. Stay tuned for that!

I realized that my color combos were pretty 80s…. I’m not sure if I will REQUIRE a 80s themed dress code for the weekend picnic, but it is still on the table at this point….

XO,

Mini Carrot Cakes!

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I wanted to make a carrot cake for Easter because I’m basic. I LOVE a carrot cake. However, holiday weekends mean a LOT of cheer so I wanted a lightened up version. Additionally, there are only two people in this house and ONE* does not like carrot cake. So I had to make some improvisations.

I started with this recipe, meant for two tiny ramekin carrot cakes. Then, like most commenters on ANY recipe (including how to boil water), I made some changes. 🙂

First, I subbed the spices for NuNaturals Chai syrup. Then I subbed the oil for unsweetened applesauce. I used less brown sugar than the recipe called for- and if I am being completely honest I think a pinch of it would be good.

Next, I omitted the cream cheese frosting entirely. I know (clutches pearls). Instead, I boiled some rainbow carrot ribbons in a mixture of water and NuNaturals vanilla syrup. After they simmered for a bit I put them on a silicon baking mat and crisped them in the oven at 350 degrees for 8 minutes (whilst the cakes baked). Here’s the process:

When it came time to plate the recipe I was pretty overwhelmed. See… the ramekins that they were baked in are adorable serving dishes on their own… but they also come out of those ramekins nicely. So they COULD be on a little cake stand or in a bebe skillet. Choices are hard…

I opted to eat mine in the skillet (pictured in the center). It was SO good!! I decided to offer a bite to my husband as a “maybe I’ll win him over” test. See, he isn’t a sweets person. He is MOS DEF not a carrot cake person. He is a cream cheese frosting person, but there was nary a cream cheese morsel to be found.

Welp.

*Remember the one person I asterisked above? That was me. Now there are two people who like carrot cake because Homeboy wanted to SPLIT IT. He liked it! My husband is very honest and does not eat things he doesn’t like, especially baked goods. So, he ate half from the skillet plate and I ate the other half on the little cake stand.

You heard it here first, folks: this recipe will turn carrot cake haters into carrot cake eating machines (or diplomatic “let’s go halvsies” dudes). Here’s my modified recipe:

Yay! Let me know if you try it. So easy AND delish!

XO,

Galentine’s Day

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For those of you who are unaware, Galentine’s Day is traditionally celebrated on February 13th. Leslie Knope (from Parks and Recreation) holds a brunch to have fun with her female friends. It is a day where ladies get together to celebrate friendship.

Generally speaking, I like to give gifts to pals… mostly made of sugar. Here’s an example of the copious amounts of sugar I shoved toward my peeps in mid-February days of yore:

Sadly, this year is socially distanced. Austin has been at Stage 5 for a while, but we recently moved to Stage 4. Once we are in Stage 3 I plan on mailing some pink and red sugary treats to my friends (where gender is not important- friendship is).

Until then, I wrote this post with a few ideas for your Galentine’s Day. Or any day, really. These are mostly breakfast foods, as Leslie Knope loves breakfast foods, especially waffles!

Waffles

I made a video about this waffle, which is the KEY Galentine’s Day brunch item:

My family used to chop up Easter candies and add them to pancakes. I did something similar here. I chopped up a candy bar (shown in the next section) and added it to the waffle batter. Delicious.

If you do not have a waffle iron, you could make Galentine pancakes instead! Here’s a pile of mini pancakes with sprinkles and a chocolate-covered strawberry. Still festive and no extra appliance required:

Pancakes seem too “every day?” How about some cinnamon rolls topped with pink cream cheese icing and sprinkles?!

Last Minute Ideas (No Oven Needed)

Are you reading this on February 13th? Happy Galentine’s Day if you are! I have provided two ideas. One uses store bought cookies and the other requires only a microwave in this video (okay, fine… a microwave IS an oven, but it is the oven for people who don’t like to bake).

Chocolate Bars

Candy bar molds are cheap and I am obsessed. Yes, you can use any mold (I am sure some people have spheres from the great cocoa bomb experiment of December 2020). However, making an ACTUAL candy bar made of smaller squares makes me feel like Willy Wonka. You can learn more of these in the video, but if you have no interest in motion pictures, know some of these have M&Ms and some have leftover cake crumbles from last week’s post (I froze them for this purpose).

“Store Bought is Fine.”

As Ina Garten has said many times, you can TOTALLY buy delish food from stores and use that instead. We received a gargantuan bucket of Cheryl’s Cookies from my husband’s work. So I put some in the cute handmade heart I made. BOOM. Magic. Also, I kept these wrapped because they’d be fresh whenever my Galentine eats them AND Cheryl doesn’t think I’m trying to start a turf war.

What if my Valentine/Galentine has a favorite recipe that doesn’t make sense as pink/red/heart shaped?

Great question, self! I completely understand this query and think that people should get what they WANT as gifts, especially if it is a recipe you’ve made them before and they like them. For example, one of my Galentines Jeca likes my Molasses Cookies, which are not pink. They could potentially be heart shaped, but they are crackle-top cookies and a broken heart seems a bit to emo for a gift. So, I made the damned Molasses Cookies. End of Story.

Enjoy your February, friend!

However you choose to celebrate Galentine’s Day, remember you deserve a delicious treat. So make yourself a waffle. Or pancake. Or PB&J. We all deserve one- 2020 was weird and 2021 is kinda cray fillet as well.

And, since we are close friends, please don’t tell Leslie Knope that I like my waffles the NORMAL way… with three gallons of syrup and 2 gargantuan pats of butter:

XO,

Quit Playing Games with my Heart (of Chocolates)

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Well, we all know the DELIGHT of Valentine’s Day chocolates. Really, any sweet. However, I am partial to the foil heart of chocolates. It is old school and classic. Sadly, nowadays these hearts are mostly packaging. I’m glad I am not married to Russell Stover, because check out this crap:

Also, you probably cannot tell, but the top center chocolate was cracked. Like REALLY, Russell?!
You couldn’t ensure each of the like 9 chocolates in this gargantuan heart were unscathed???

If I am being fully honest, I prefer my baked goods to most candies. So I decided to spend the past two weeks filling this Russell Stover heart with BETTER options. It does not take two weeks to make ANY of the recipes below. I just spaced out the making of them so I did not go into a sugar coma while testing these. I’m selfless, y’all.

First up? Merengue Cookies (arguably the healthiest one since they are mostly Egg Whites…. basically a Rocky Balboa type of gift).

Merengue Cookies

Now, I LOVE a merengue cookie. I love pavlovas. I am obsessed with ALL the magic whipped egg whites have to offer. They are majestic. How in the world did FOUR egg whites make all of these treasures?! Answer: They were whipped with sugar and cream of tartar, then piped by yours truly. Obviously.

Also, can we talk about how FULL this heart shaped box looks now? The one with nine socially distant chocolates is depressing. Get with it, Russell. We have emotional eating to do. 🙂

Since this recipe was so bountiful (you truly have no idea what treasures await when those four room-temp egg whites are waiting in the mixer to do their thing), I had some extra fun styling some photos. In fact- this was the first recipe where I was able to use that sweet canister from West Elm (on the left). It reminds me of the estimation jar from elementary school, but in a fashionable Greg Brady kind of way.

Craft Break

I did these cookies and put them in the heart-shaped box. Welp… real talk? I did not like Russel stealing my Thunder. I put the open box on top of the branding to hide it, but that would be boring for several shots. SO… I rebranded it… I love a craft, okay?

This will be the box featured for the rest of the baked goods:

(Can you hear me saying “ta-dahhh” while making jazz hands at the computer? I totally did)

Cake Truffles

I LOVE Milk Bar’s birthday cake truffles. They. Are. Amazing. I decided it would be fun to make cake truffles using a mug cake. So, I microwaved three mug cakes individually and cooled them in a shallow bowl (see below- they are in the teal bowl on the top right). I mixed this with the icing packets and rolled them into tiny cake balls.

Christina Tosi, aka my goddess and savior, suggests rolling them in a thin layer of white chocolate and her confetti cake crumbs. I omitted the white chocolate step by rolling the truffles in the crumbs while they were still warm out of the oven. They stuck and I put them in the freezer. I included a close up of the crumbs below because OMG look at them!

The leftover birthday cake crumbs were frozen so they could be part of a Galentine’s Day post for next week.

Stay tuned. 🙂

Chocolate Covered Strawberries

I decided to actually use the insert of the Russell Stover chocolate heart for these darlings. I know the typical chocolate-covered strawberries have stems and are full. These are strawberry halves with no tops/stems, which I think fit nicely in the box insert. I also do not like how you have to awkwardly put the stem somewhere when eating a full strawberry. The stem is great for dipping and for holding the finished product. But at what cost??? Since there’s no weird stem leftovers on mine, these little dudes can be the star of an espresso-filled Fika Friday or chill on top of an adorbs pudding snack.

Oh no- I forgot!

Did you forget a Valentine’s Day treat for your babe/dude/soulmate and still want to spread some sugary cheer? Welp, call on your local Girl Scout to order a box of cookies. Then put said cookies in a heart-shaped box. No heart-shaped box? Slap a sticker on that bad boy.

Did we just become best friends?

yup.

Sidebar: you can support Girl Scouts living in the NYC shelter system here. Realize it five minutes from your soulmate’s house? Buy the cookies, explain this AMAZING cause, and then cuddle. 🙂

Retraction

It is not normal to retract something before publishing it. However, I enjoyed giving Russell Stover candies crap because of the exponentially disappointing candy to heart-box ratio. When I googled ol’ Russ to make sure I spelled his name right I found out he was a chemist that discovered how to ensconce ice cream with a chocolate shell.

Due to this, mea culpa Russ. Love you.

-Ber

xo,

Crafternoon- Valentine’s Day (well, month) Edition

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Hey, friends!

I wanted to share a quick craft I did to get our home lookin fly for February. We have a basic wreath on the front door that is made of twisted brown vines. I change the look of it by simply adding poms. The past two versions, fall and winter, both had poms individually tied to the wreath. This was not ideal because there was occasional separation and it did not look uniform. Also, it was a pain to take off the wreath when changing designs because each pom was tied on individually.

I decided that future designs would be affixed to cardboard (from one of the many-a-boxes we get- thanks, Covid). The first one? A beautiful heart. And I actually used the ENTIRE skein of yarn you see below. For those of you who don’t want to squint, that is over FOUR HUNDRED YARDS of yarn turned into adorbs poms.

First, I began by cutting a heart out of cardboard, then folded it in half to cut lines. If I am being fully transparent, I was not sure what I was doing. Initially I thought I would alternate every other line, but the poms ended up working well on each line, so I just kept making poms and tying them onto the heart. I was mirroring the poms along the way because the yarn is gradient and I wanted to make sure there was a sort of flow to the color changes.

Once I trimmed the heart, it was time to attach it to the wreath. This was done with zip-ties, which are basically noncommittal duct tape. I showed how I placed them on the top right. The bottom right pic is my finished product with my supervisor Champion.

It was finally ready to be hung on our front door! I realize the juxtaposition of the message on the sign with the heart, but we have had some really uncomfortable “not interested” conversations with strangers on our porch. 🙂

I do have one more Valentine’s Day craft up my sleeve. It involves a heart shaped box of Chocolates (seen below) which was transformed with washi tape, sharpie paint pens, and a sticker. 🙂 Wait until you see what I bake/make for inside this adorbs vessel!!!!

Happy excuse to eat sugar and wear pink month (I know that there are two days left in January, but I have been eating pink heart shaped treats for weeks, sooooo….),

2021 is here… I hope it is nicer than 2020 was (total jerk, am I right?).

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We are officially THREE days into 2021 and so far so good! I suppose one could assume this is because I haven’t done much or expected anything. I counter that it MIGHT be because of the lucky foods I prepared for myself and my *hubster the past few days.

There are three categories of lucky foods we consumed in hopes of a thrilling (or at least less crappy) new year:

  1. Round Foods- circular foods represent continuity, unity, and the year coming full circle. I went a bit overboard with this one because it was so easy to do. Stay tuned- there are pictures below.
  2. Rice and Noodles- starches symbolize abundance because they swell when they are cooked! We had rice pudding and ramen… on different days because we have health goals. 🙂 Oh- it is also lucky to find an almond in rice pudding over the holidays. So I put an almond in both of our dishes. You cannot be TOO lucky in 2021…
  3. Pork- Germans and Pennsylvania Dutch (shout out to Lancaster County, PA) believe pork brings progress because they are always moving forward. I cannot help but think of the Samuel L. Jackson scene in Pulp Fiction where he describes pigs as “filthy animals.” So I don’t. Team Vincent Vega over here.
    1. Marzipan Pig- not technically pork, but also lucky. So I threw one of those bad boys on top of our rice pudding. As you’ll see below, it looked like a decapitated pig head. Perhaps I was trying to scare 2021 with a “come at me, bro” vibe. Or maybe I knew it was too sweet for us and a whole marzipan pig would be overkill. One will never know (because I am mysterious and will NEVER tell).

*My husband does not like the term “hubster,” but it has become less of an issue in nearly a decade of wedded bliss.

Round Foods

Rice and Noodles

Pork

So, if we are billionaires with 8-pack abs at the end of 2021, you might want to watch this video where I made a terrifying marzipan pig head. Because CLEARLY that’s the key to this whole dang thing…

Also, shout out to these melting potatoes:

While this picture didn’t fit the aesthetic of my Instagram account, it is SOOOOOO pretty and the potatoes taste even better than they look. OMG.

Happy 2021!

Yule Logs are Not Easy to Roll. Or Decorate. Or Take Pictures of, TBH…

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I REALLY wanted to make a Buche de Noel for Christmas this year. We did not travel anywhere and it seemed like the perfect time to create a dessert with a stupid amount of steps and processes. I am going to share the broad strokes with you here! There’s a full video if you want to watch this go down- including me rolling the video and seeing my cake crack… thrice.

First, I wanted to make meringue mushrooms for this adorbs cake. I did… and were they the most adorable things I’ve created, then eaten? Yes.

Will I make them to top any dessert I create when we eventually entertain again? Also yes. SO. CUTE.

Next, I made the roll cake. My husband is not a huge cake person. He isn’t even a small cake person. He’s a human person who doesn’t love cake. So I asked him to choose the cake/icing flavors hoping this would entice him to eat a slice or two (it did!) He opted for red velvet cake and cream cheese frosting (in the same recipe link).

I thought about making a chocolate buttercream or chocolate cream cheese frosting for the cake, but my man is a PURIST and would be super sad there was another flavor sneaking into his VIP party in Flavortown. So I just made the cream cheese frosting brown with food coloring. Problem solved!

I also chopped off the roll on the front piece pictured below (have no fear- we ate it). It was not the blunt shape of the other ends and I wanted continuity. Next time I’ll attach it on that side, to not need this step (This is a lie- I will do the same thing so I can eat cake sooner).

I also wanted to cover the roll cake with rolled pieces of chocolate so it looked like real bark. This became an EXCELLENT idea because my roll cake had one three cracks in it when I rolled it up. I glued the cake back together with the brown colored cream cheese frosting, then covered it with the chocolate bark.

The last few steps were putting ground pistachios around as moss and placing the mushrooms (once again using brown cream cheese frosting as glue). The green sticks are matcha pocky. So cute, no?

The last step? Making my husband take pictures of me as I added powdered sugar snow:

Awe.

We ate most of this and I froze two slices for a rainy day. You can watch a video of the whole process here.

XO,

Snail Mail Cookies

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I did not go home last year for Christmas. I was working in Montana and flights out of there on a normal day were astronomical. I did not dare book one with holiday markups! The plan was to have a chill Christmas at the apartment, then travel to visit family on Spring Break or at summer break. Then Covid happened and stopped those plans.

So, for the second Christmas, my partner and I are chillin at home. This one, though during Covid times, has to be INFINITELY better than last year. We had the flu and I made a pancake with chocolate chips and watched Susperia hopped up on cold meds. Do not recommend.

I mailed gifts to friends and family last year. This year I mailed cookies because baking is my love language. It is how I show people I appreciate them. I also craft, but I only finished two of my planned projects. Any crafter will tell you this is a yearly ordeal where we say “next year I’ll start earlier.” Then we don’t. This cycle continues until we die and our family/partners stare in horror at the stash of craft supplies we never used. I don’t make the rules- this is just what happens.

I digress.

Cookies! Here’s a fun video of the cookies I made. There were three items I mailed: holiday scones, roll out cookies, and iced sugar cookies. Generally I make a few iced sugar cookies, but this year was summed up with one large cookie. You’ll see.

Holiday Scones

My holiday scones were a modified version of the funfetti scones from Sally’s Baking Addiction. I use her recipes a lot, as they are user friendly and from scratch. The mods in this recipe were pretty straight forward: I replaced half of the white chocolate chips with peppermint chips and regular sprinkles with holiday sprinkles. I also did not put much glaze on the top because the peppermint sprinkles were very sweet. These were great with coffee. I finally got to use my mini scone pan and will mos def be making another version of these for my next mail call.

Butter Cookies

I bought this sweet rolling pin on etsy! It actually embosses nordic designs onto cookie dough! It worked well, though it took me a bit to figure out the best pressure to use when rolling and dough temperature. I assumed the butter cookie dough* had to be SUPER cold to roll out, but it turned out it worked better mostly cold so it had some give when the rolling pin did its thing. Here is a shot of some of the all-star cookies:

After this photo shoot I let them cool, then dipped them in chocolate and sprinkled them with ground pistachios or red jimmies. I had leftover chocolate and pistachio, so I made some pistachio bark. And by “make pistachio bark” I mean I used a spatula to pour the chocolate on top of the pistachios and waited for it to harden. It looked fancy though:

*I did not add all spice to this recipe as suggested. I wanted the buttery flavor to be the star. Just an aside in case you were really invested in this…

Dumpster Fire Sugar Cookies

The last cookie is my iced sugar cookie. I have used the cut out cookie recipe from Make it Sweet since I first started perfecting my sugar cookies. If you follow the steps and chill the dough as suggested, the shapes hold up PERFECTLY in the oven. You could put the cutter over the cookie and then faint at the accuracy. Make sure you put some pillows down first or have a fainting couch at the ready.

This cutter is from etsy and had an embossed piece with it. I used it, but I iced them so you cannot actually see the embossing on the finished products. It was nice though because it acted as a guide for the flames and the dumpster outline.

2020 Snail Mail

As with all USPS packages, some have arrived to family and friends and some are hiding in piles waiting to be delivered. I am glad I heat seal the bags. Hopefully these bad boys hold up. If not, it is the thought that counts? Do we get a re-do next year? Asking for a friend.

Shout out to the USPS and all of the people busting ass this holiday season. It has been a weird one and we appreciate you.

xo,