Chocolate Pretzels

After making your cake balls, you may have left-over chocolate. Just break out the bag of pretzels in the pantry and dip them. Set them on wax paper to set up.

Cake Balls

Mix and bake your favorite cake as per its own directions.

While it is still hot, crumble it in a bowl and stir in about 2 cups (or one tub) of your favorite frosting.

Using a cookie scoop, shape the cake and frosting mixture into balls. If you wet your hands slightly it will help them shap easier and keep your hands from getting so sticky.

Put the balls into the fridge or freezer to chill. They are easier to dip that way.

Melt a brick of almond bark in the microwave, stirring often until fully melted.

Dip each chilled cake ball into the chocolate and place on wax paper to dry.

Taste kind of like a Hostess Cupcake without the creme filling. Very tasty!

2 Versions of Peppermint Oreos

Seriously, these look so good, I feel like reaching into the computer screen and grabbing one. I kept seeing these on people's blogs and wanted to give them a try. They. were. delicious. There are lots of versions of these. I combined two recipes that met my requirements of ease, and not having to buy cream cheese.

For the cookies and general inspiration, I used the recipe off of I heart naptime (the girl who ate everything was guest blogging). You've probably seen this cookie recipe before. They are the easiest and softest chocolate cookies ever.

Cookie:

2 boxes Devil's food cake mix

4 eggs

2/3 C vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl mix the cake mix, eggs, and oil with a mixer. The batter will be very stiff. Pinch off pieces of batter and roll into 1 inch balls. Place 1 inch apart on prepared cookie sheeta nd flatten slightly with fingertips. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. Remove immediately from the cookie sheets and let cool on a wire rack (like I have a wire rack!!)

Filling:

Since I didn't have cream cheese, I went over to Cupcake Project for the filling (you could also use her cookie recipe if you don't have the cake mix lying around).

Ingredients:

1/4 C room temp unsalted butter

1/4 C vegetable shortening

2 C sifted powdered sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract (I used 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tsp peppermint extract for these cookies)

Directions:

Place butter and shortening in mixing bowl, and at low speed, gradually beat in the sugar and vanilla. Turn mixer on high and beat until filling is light and fluffy.

To make the cookies, we (yes, the children helped!!) used pastry bags to pipe the frosting into the center of the cookies. You could just spread it on with a knife too. After putting on the top cookie, we rolled the cookies into candy cane bits (the kids used the end of an ice cream scooper to smash the candy canes while the plastic was still on. It was a big hit with them, no pun intended).

Then try and restrain yourself from eating the whole batch.

The very day after we went to all the trouble to make these, I found another version of peppermint oreo's on my sister in laws blog. She takes oreos, dips them in white chocolate bark, and then in crushed candy canes. I bought some white chocolate and we are doing those next.

Don' they look fun?

(picture stolen from Alicia Warnock. wahaha)

pizza muffins, a christmas tree, and one more snowman

Since we moved to VA, I only shop twice a month, once each pay day. (Well theoretically anyway). The commissary is too far to justify more than that, and the prices at the grocery stores are too much to justify shopping anywhere but the commissary. Since I'm not that great of a planner, I have to get pretty creative just before pay day.

Here are some recipes I made earlier this week based on desperation, that we happened to enjoy:

I had a bag of maybe 10 pepperonis and some cheddar cheese in the fridge, so I was thinking of doing some kind of pizza for the kid's lunch on Monday. But I was not in the mood to make dough or sauce. I searched around online and found this cute recipe which was fabulously transportable and yummy.

Behold, the pizza muffin:

I found the recipe at FreezerDinner.com. You can go here for the recipe. We will definitely be making these again, especially when we have more pepperoni and green onions (we just used white). I wanted to save some for the freezer, but they were too good. We'll be making a bigger batch when we do them again.

My next food crisis was family home evening, where a dessert is required. I had just used my last egg on the pizza muffins which seriously eliminated a lot of possibilities. I dug through the cabinets and found a box of ice cream cones (they were from my witch cupcakes). Perfect to make Christmas Trees. Luckily, I had about a 4th of a can of frosting in the fridge, but I could have made frosting. I have a cookie jar full of smarties from Sophie's candy girl costumes, so those were my ornaments. And I raided the kids halloween bags for starburst tree toppers. Cole put these together and I think he did a fabulous job.

The night before, Sunday, is also a night where dessert is essential, don't you think?? I had cupcakes in my freezer (again, cupcakes I put aside when doing the halloween ones) and snowmen still on my mind. I have the book Hello, Cupcake!, and have always wanted to try their snowmen which are darling. I didn't have all their accesories, but used what I could find. The only thing I bought was the pull apart licorice for the scarf and earmuffs, but I used my extra care bucks from CVS to do it (in case you are concerned that I went to the store before pay day;).

Once there was a snowman, snowman, snowman

Once there was a snowman, tall tall tall

In Cole's mouth it melted, melted, melted

In Cole's mouth it melted, small, small small.

We were feeling silly tonight.

After Halloween, I would never dream of doing 31 days of Christmas foods. However; I could be talked in to 31 days of snowmen;)

melt in you mouth sugar cookies

This is one cookie I remember making with my mom at Christmas time. It always seemed like so much fun to get to press the cup in the cookie dough!!

Ingredients:

2 1/4 C flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 C butter, softened (no substitutions)

1/2 C confectioners' sugar

1/2 C granulated sugar, plus

2 tbl granulated sugar

1 egg

1/2 C vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350. Combine flour, baking soda, cream of tartar and salt. In a large bowl, beat butter, confectioners sugar, and 1/2 C granulated sugar on medium speed about 2 min or until creamy. Reduce speed to low, beat in egg, then beat in oil and vanilla. Gradually beat in flour mixture just until blended, occasionally scraping bowl.

Place remaining 2 tbsp sugar in a small bowl or saucer. Shape dough by rounded tsp into 3/4 inch balls. Place balls 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Dip punch cup or glass with raised or cut design on bottom, or coarse side of meat mallet into sugar in bowl, use to flatted each ball into a 1 1/2 inch round (I use food coloring in the sugar to color the cookies).

Bake 10-11 min until edges are golden. Transfer to wire rack to cool. Store cookies in tightly covered container at room temp up to 1 week or in freezer up to 3 months.

sweet chex mix

got this recipe from good friend Janae Black. it's a favorite and an easy treat to make for neighborhood christmas treat gifts.

1/2 box corn chex

1/2 box rice chex

1/2 box golden grahams

2 C coconut

1 C silvered almonds

mix above ingredients together

Sauce

3/4 C butter

1 C sugar

1 C white karo syrup

pour sauce over dry ingredients

stir

pour a single layer on waxed paper to set.

Healthy Christmas Tree Snack

I saw this at gourmetmomonthego.com and thought it was so cute I had to start with it!! Plus I love sugar snap peas. ((I don't have to list the recipe do I??)) There was one suggestion to cut cheese slices into ornament shapes to decorate the tree with. Fun.