Christmas Baking

The kitchen truly is the heart of the home. We rediscovered that yesterday as we did our Christmas baking. During this past semester, between Ben's work and my school, we haven't had much time to spend together. How did we spend the first day we had together for our Christmas vacation? Baking. Yummies for our neighbors! Sometimes, I tend to be controlling when we cook because I think I know everything (because I do. Duh.), but yesterday, we worked with super teamwork, spending 6ish hours in the kitchen making our foods, plating them, deciding who needed the Christmas cheer, and doing dishes... It was fun! And the reason I say that do to this, we have discovered the kitchen as the heart as the home is because... dun dun dun... we totally fell in love while we did this together!
So this is what we made

Reindeer Food

These are SO easy!

You just take 6 cups chex

a bag of white chocolate chips (melted) 

1/3 c crushed peppermint.

Put the chex on wax paper and drizzle the chocolate (with half of the peppermint) over it. 

Toss it to combine.

Then sprinkle the rest of the peppermint over top :)

It takes about 20 minutes or so to harden.

 Sugar Cookies

 

Chocolate Cookies 

(with cream cheese frosting and crushed peppermint)

 

These were incredibly delicious. 

Use your favorite chocolate cookie recipe.

Then I made the cream cheese frosting except I only used half the cream cheese and substituted the other half with extra butter (so the cream cheese doesn't completely overpower the mint).

Frost and sprinkle with crushed candy canes!

and Pumpkin Cake balls 

(which I didn't take a picture of by themselves because I forgot.)

Here are the finished plates. Yum!

***Tips on crushing candy canes: it's really fun to smash the bag of candy canes on the wall. This is a fair warning to everyone--the candy canes poke holes in the bag and then you are dealing with a powdery mess on the floor. If you feel the urge to use that technique, double or triple, or even quadruple your bag. You can also use  a rolling pin, and when it's into small pieces, use the butt of a wooden spoon to continue crushing it to desired conssitency :)

Remember, the kitchen is the heart of the home. It's ok if you make messes. Have fun :)