Belated Christmas Wrap Up

Things have been crazy around here lately - between the holidays and enjoying having Joe home for a week - I am super behind on my posts. So I figured I would recap the Christmas stuff and then I can move on to more current things! The week before Christmas, the other sister Kelsey came over and we did some baking. The first thing I wanted to attempt was peppermint bark make in silicon molds that I had pinned:

(source)

I followed the directions from Once Upon a Plate and they were very easy. Here are some of my progress pics:

A layer of melted white chocolate with some peppermint extract and crushed candy canes - then chill.

Then a layer of dark chocolate with peppermint extract and crushed candy canes. Chill then remove!

I made snowflakes and trees since those were the molds I had. I packaged them up and sent them to work with Joe and got some good reviews.


Kelsey was handling the cookie making while I was melting all this chocolate. A favorite of mine are these peanut butter reindeer cookies:

I found the recipe in one of my mom's magazines years ago (maybe Redbook?) and have been making them ever since. I think this is the recipe. Unfortunately, I bought the worlds smallest pretzels so these reindeer have tiny antlers (and giant eyes):

We also made the standard chocolate chip cookies.  Here was the chaos of the kitchen all afternoon:

A couple days later I tried the recipe for soft sugar cookies that Shannon tried here. The came out great but unfortunately I forgot to take pics. I also used this tutorial for the icing. The frosting was tasty but I didn't quite master the piping part (so its probably best that I forgot to document!).

Anyway to conclude - I will probably make the bark again next year. It was well received and was super easy to make. Plus I think it looks nicer (and makes less of a mess) then traditional broken up bark. Of course my reindeer and chocolate chip cookies will be repeated as well - they are timeless. Hopefully I have time to make the sugar cookies again so I can show you some pictures (and master the piping) - maybe Valentine's Day!

This wraps up all things Christmas here. I hope everyone had a great Holiday and fun New Year!