Christmas Traditions

I know it is a bit early for talking about Christmas, but I was asked by Paperless Post (I wasn't paid) to share some of the traditions we have for the holidays.  I love Christmas and have Christmas on my brain anyways, since I'm helping to plan a huge party for my husband's work (75 tables!).

With the recent moves, some of our traditions have changed, but most remain.  For example, while living in Idaho, I loved going into the forest soon after Thanksgiving to find our Christmas tree and then decorate it while listening to music and drinking hot cocoa.  Now that the forest has been replaced with onion fields and vineyards, we got an artificial tree, which Michael loves, because it is prelit.  So we now we do the same thing just with a different tree.  Though we don't use Santa (except dressing up Vanilla as Santa), we put up stockings and put in small fun surprises and treats for the girls.

Something else we try to do each year is to make cookies and chocolates.  Growing up, my Grandma did this every year and since she passed, I have been trying some of her recipes.  One of my favorites of hers are Peanut Butter Balls, which I have blogged about here.  Someday when I'm brave enough, I will try making her Almond Roca.  In addition to those, we usually make Oreo Truffles.  For the cookies, we often make gingerbread cookies and sugar cookies.  One year, we make some Perky Penquins and Candy Cane cookies that we a huge hit.

Another tradition we have been starting for the girls have been Advent Calenders.  In the past we have read different parts of the Nativity Story each day.  This year I got a Meri Meri one, that I think the girls will love, since they will be building the Nativity Scene and can play with the little pieces.  A plus for me is that we can reuse it.

Some years we send out Christmas cards.  The year that sticks out in my mind the most is one where our Christmas cards were also an announcment that we were going to have baby Eleanor!  Looking through Paperless Post, there are a ton of amazing options (including a bunch of free ones) and they will even email or mail them for you.  I could spend hours pouring over them trying to decide which one I want to use.  You should check out their Christmas Collection here.

What are some of your favorite traditions?

Grandma's Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls

Every year my grandma would make a bunch of yummy treats.  Now that her health isn't what it was, she rarely makes them any more, so I asked her if I could copy her recipes.  One of my favorites are her peanut butter balls.  Since I made a batch this year, I thought I would share it with you.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls

• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 3/4 cups finely crushed graham crackers
• 1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter
• 2 sticks melted butter
• 12 oz package of chocolate chips

Mix all ingredients, except chocolate, in a mixer.

Form into small balls and chill in a fridge for an hour.

Melt chocolate chips.  Dip balls and place on waxed paper.

Keep chilled until served.

I also made two different fudges (milk chocolate and butterscotch) using the recipe on the back of the Kraft Marshmallow creme jar and some oreo truffles using the recipe from here.  For the truffles, I also made some adding some broken candy canes inside and on top to keep track of which ones they were.

Merry Christmas!

Sugar Baby: Pastry Cream and Fruity Bavarian Cream

The Bavarian cream recipe called for pastry cream and called for pastry cream, so we did a two for one, especially since she said the pastry cream is only good for two days in the fridge.

The pastry cream seemed really easy and we didn't have any problems.  We chilled it overnight before making the Bavarian cream and tasted what was left on the spoon.  Pretty tasty.  The next day we pureed some blueberries and made up the fruity Bavarian cream.  It also was super easy.

The next day after the girls went to bed, we remembered we were going to have it for dessert with the girls.  We decided to just eat it ourselves since the pastry cream recipe said it was only good for two days in the fridge.

It looked lovely and the taste was okay.  The texture bothered me the most.  I think a different fruit probably would have been better.  Overall, I thought it was alright and we might try it again with a different fruit, but probably not.

Sugar Baby: Crème Caramel

Otherwise known as flan, as I read through this recipe, I got pretty nervous with words like steady hands and immediately.  Being nervous was quite appropriate, since we had some difficulties.  It took us three tries to make the caramel sauce.  The first try we ended up with dry sugar.  All the water boiled out.  We tried again after doing a little more research.  This time we saw that it still was just crystallizing instead of caramelizing.  On the third try, Michael realized that we weren't getting it hot enough so we adjusted and it finally worked, only this time we probably over did it.  Then it took us too long to divide it up between the ramekins and it hardened up so we couldn't coat the whole bottom.  The custard part was pretty much just like the Crème Anglaise and went fairly smoothly.

Here they are before I removed them from the ramekins.

I had some difficulty getting them to come out, but out they came.  I think it is so cool that it looks like this one has a heart on it.  As you'll notice the rock hard burnt sugar liquefied somehow.  It came as a complete surprise to me.

None of us really enjoyed the end results.  I found the custard to be too egg like in its taste.  The best part was the caramelized sugar sauce and I would have like that to be a little less runny.  We probably won't be making this one again.

Sugar Baby: Crème Anglaise

For the fun of it (and I don't know how to put those fun little accents above letters), I looked up crème anglaise and according to Wikipedia it is "French for "English Creme"".  I found that pretty amusing.  Anyhow, with this recipe we had tons of options, from eating it straight like a soup to crème brûlée.  We decided to go with pain perdu or more commonly known as french toast.

This was the most involved recipe so far with a lot of whisking on the stove and in the mixer.  After what seemed forever, it was finally done or at least ready for us to make french toast.  I tasted it and it was like a soupy vanilla pudding.  I'd say fairly good.

Next, we dipped slices of french bread it and fried them.  As far as french toast  goes, this was pretty good, but I don't think it was quite worth all the work that went into it.  

So basically, we thought that this was a great recipe if someone is willing to do it for you.

Sugar Baby: Lemon Gelato

I have to admit I was pretty excited when I saw this recipe in the book.  I've always wanted to try gelato and I love lemon desserts.  It was way easier than I expected.  The worst part was getting zest and juice from 4 large lemons, but so worth it.  It made the kitchen smell amazing!  We even got to make the recipe we had skipped since we had no need for it, which was the Simple Syrup.

After letting it cool overnight, we tossed it into our handy dandy kitchen aid ice cream maker and let it do it's magic.  Then viola!  Gelato!

It was a little strong on the lemon side, but still super yummy.  I don't think all the yogurt made it in so they could be why.  Definitely, making some sort of gelato again.

Sugar Baby: Gelée Shots

The latest recipe to be conquered was Gelée Shots.  It was the first recipe I thought was fun to do and as a plus it was super easy.

Since we don't drink alcohol (and this recipe doesn't cook it all out), we changed the recipe just a smidgen   Instead of champagne or hard apple cider, we used regular apple cider.  And since we were using apple cider we used apple bits for the fresh fruit in the middle.  I forgot apples float so we should have put them in before we let the first half set so that they wouldn't rise to the top.  It was still pretty and it was so much fun to watch the apples bounce on the gelatin.

I think we will probably make this again experimenting with different juices and fruits.  It would make a lovely and tasty dessert for guests.

Sugar Baby: Dulce de Leche

Our next date night we made Dulce de Leche.  At first I decided we would make it from scratch but decided it would take too long and since we are doing all our candy making after the girls go to bed, the faster the better.  So we went with her Option #2 and as I call it, The Cheaters Option.  Basically, just boiling a can of sweetened condensed milk forever.

When we poured it out of the can the top portion wasn't done enough (tasted like macaroni and cheese with a caramel after taste), but the stuff on the bottom was done, so we mixed it all together in hopes of evening it out more.  If it wasn't 9:15 at night, we probably would have let it boil longer, maybe next time.

We only had a small taste that night and decided we needed to try it with apples.  Michael thought it was alright with them and a friend tried it seemed to really enjoy them.  It wasn't really to my liking, but I'm super picky, so you shouldn't skip trying it based on my opinion.

Sugar Baby: Rock Candy

The first recipe we tried was Rock Candy.  If you want to make your own I found a fairly descriptive blog post about it here.

My only memory of eating it was on a family trip to Wisconsin.  We stopped at Wall Drug Store in Wall, South Dakota and my daddy bought us all some.  I think mine was purple, since it was my favorite color at the time.

It was pretty easy to make, if you don't mind being patient.  We choose to do the tooth pick method instead of string so that we could get more individual candies, instead of just two large ones.  The only problem we had (other than my husband not realizing the recipe continued onto the next page) was we forgot to dip the tooth picks in extra sugar after dipping in the sugar water.  If we had done that I think we would have seen results a lot sooner, as it was we didn't start seeing any (teeny tiny grains of sugar sized) crystals forming anywhere till 5 days after we made the sugar water.

Finally, 10 days after we started we gave up and took them out.  They are definitely mini rock candies.  We also spooned out the crystals that were forming on the surface to get the most from it we could.  It looked like Michael was taking out ice.

Despite being so tiny, they do taste like I expected them too, pure sugary goodness.

Sugar Baby Date Nights

My husband and I are very different people.  He likes Star Trek, air-soft, and four wheeling and I like Downton Abbey, sewing and reading.  I watch his nerdy shows with him (while browsing Pinterest) and he lets me spend money on fabric.  But for the longest time I've been trying to find something that we can both enjoy together that doesn't involve the television set.  Finally, we hit upon the perfect idea. I suggested we go through a pastry cookbook together, sort of like Julie and Julia and Michael mentioned that he's always wanted to learn about candy making.  Bingo!  I then go to the internet and look around till I find a candy making cookbook that looks interesting.  I remembered one I had seen a while back that had a super pretty cover.  It was Sugar Baby by Gesine Bullock-Prado.  

Source

Once a week, my husband and I are going to try a recipe together.  Starting from the beginning and hopefully do all them, from rock candy to spun sugar.  I'm going to try to document our creations and share them here.  

I'm super excited!  I just hope I don't gain too much weight doing this, but what's a few pounds in the name of love.