Winning Holiday Recipes: Part 1

I promised people that I would put some recipes up from the wonderful things that I made this holiday season.  We tried 10 new recipes this year, and the top 5 are listed over on the side bar (in no particular order, my order and Brett's order are different).  I'm going to share the first three recipes with you today.  The first is for Chocolate Snowballs, which I don't have a picture for, but believe  me they are beautiful piled high on a plate.

Chocolate Snowballs

From Mary Lou Welsh via Taste of Home Best Loved Cookies and Bars

3/4 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 egg

1/4 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup baking cocoa

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

Confectioner's sugar

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy.  Add the egg, milk, and vanilla; mix well.  Combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt, and baking soda; gradually add to creamed mixture.  Cover and refrigerate overnight.  Shape into 1-inch balls; place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets.  Bake at 350 for 7-8 minutes or until the tops are crackled.  Remove to wire racks to cool completely.  Roll cookies in the confectioner's sugar.

Frosted Cocoa Cookies

From Diane Moran via Taste of Home Best Loved Cookies and Bars

1 cup shortening

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup baking cocoa

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

FROSTING:

1/3 cup butter, softened

3 cups confectioner's sugar

1/3 cup baking cocoa

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

3 to 4 tablespoons of milk

In a large mixing bowl, cream shortening and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Beat in vanilla.  Combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well.  Roll into 1-1/2 inch balls.  Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets.  Bake at 350 for 13-16 minutes or until set.  Remove to wire racks to cool.  For frosting, in a small mixing bowl, combine the butter, confectioner's sugar, cocoa, and extract.  Add enough milk to achieve desired consistency.  Drizzle over cookies.

The last recipe is for Cranberry Bread, which I got off of The Pioneer Woman blog.  Click here for a link to that recipe.  She has a seriously addicting blog, so you should check out some of the other things she has on there.  Her recipe calls for blueberries, but I just substituted the cranberries to make it more festive.  I did use Rachel's Yogurt, although she says that you don't have to.  She also has a recipe for a dipping sauce to go with it which I didn't make because I only had 2 yogurts.  Anyway, I hope you enjoy the recipes!  Look for part 2 soon, but not too soon since we are leaving for Texas tomorrow for the New Year!

A Very Merry Christmas

I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas!  We certainly did.  This year we were in Santaquin with Brett's family.  We stayed the night on Christmas Eve so that we could be there bright and early with everyone to open some presents and see what Santa brought.  Everyone came over for dinner on Christmas Eve when we ate all kinds of treats and good soup.  Our niece Kasia was the resident Who from Whoville.

You should click on the picture to really see how cool her hair looked.  We played a lot of games and had a good time with everyone.  And Kennedy looked great in her Santa hat.

We had a bit of a rough night because we had to stay up for Santa when we had already had a long day.  Kennedy woke up at about midnight when I was the only one (other than the kids) in bed.  She had a little bit of trouble going down again, but eventually she did, only to wake up again at 4:00.  That wouldn't normally have been too weird considering the big day we had, but she decided that she was awake at that time and wanted all of her presents.  Brett was up with her for about an hour before she finally got tired again.  And she was up bright and early (well, 7:45) with us again to open her presents.

Kennedy is sporting the cute Christmas jammies, courtesy of Grandpa Pitt, that she got to open on Christmas Eve.  Santa (Grandma Pitt) got her this fun little piano that she has had a blast with.  It plays all kinds of music, counts, and does a bunch of other fun things too.  Santa also brought her some mega lego blocks, a picture of Jesus, and a stuffed Eeyore.

Her stocking came stuffed with snacks, a toothbrush (for her 2 1/2 teeth), and a toy cell phone.  She likes that one a lot because it beeps when you press the buttons.  I think that's her favorite part about our cell phones too.  Kennedy got completely spoiled by everyone this year.  She has more noisy toys than she can stand, tons of new things to chew on, some new clothes, a CD player with some CDs and a new Baby Einstein DVD.  She got a doll, bath toys, a LeapPad, and a cookie jar shape sorter.  She is going to be well occupied for a long time.  Here she is with her aunt Amanda and the fun stuffed pig she got her.

Brett and I had a wonderful time watching her open her presents.  We don't have more pictures than this because it got to be nap time halfway through the presents and we had to finish opening them while she was asleep.  We did pretty well ourselves as far as gifts go.  I got Ina Garten's new cookbook, a Swivel Sweeper, a cool African necklace from Brett's parents, and a bunch of new movies.  Brett got some Jazz tickets, Super Smash Brothers Brawl for the Wii, and some chickens donated to a family in Africa in his name.  We played with presents and family all day until it was time to have dinner.  We had prime rib, mashed potatoes, asparagus, rolls, and a bunch of other yummy stuff at Brett's brother Chris' house.  After dinner we played ping pong until Kennedy got so zonked that she needed to come home.  We came home, unpacked, put Kennedy to bed, and played a little Smash Brothers before going to bed.  It was a great holiday and we were so excited to see Kennedy have a good time.  I'm loving watching her play with all of her things this morning.  We can't wait until next year when we get to put out cookies for Santa and make some of the yummy recipes I found again!  Don't worry, recipes will follow.  For today, it's nice to have a quiet morning at home with Kennedy and her new toys.

Our Snow Day

It snowed about a foot yesterday.  We just watched it come down all day long.  Brett got to come home a little bit early from work and decided that we were all going to go play in the snow.  He wanted to make sure that Kennedy got to play in her first snow and that I didn't go through another Christmas without having built a snowman.  Kennedy was asleep, so we waited for her to make some noise.  When she finally did, she fell back asleep in this position.

I wonder if maybe this is the reason that she wakes up in the middle of the night.  Maybe she freaks out because she wakes up on her tummy and tries to crawl around the crib.  Anyway, we got her up and into her new snowsuit courtesy of the gift certificate from great-grandma and grandpa Emigh.  It's a real snowsuit too with the overall pants and everything.

She wasn't so thrilled to be stuffed in a pillow essentially and then crammed into her car seat, even if it is a new big girl car seat.

As soon as we started driving to the park it started to snow again, but we decided to play anyway.  Despite the cold and the snow in her face, Kennedy seemed to enjoy herself.

We made a snow baby by throwing her into the snow and just letting her plop.

As I said before, I had never built a snowman, so we had to build one before we could leave.  Here's Kennedy sitting on the bottom ball of the snowman.

I contributed by making the middle ball.

Kennedy was very patient and cold, but all in all we had a successful day in the snow.  I have to say that I can't wait until Christmas so that Kennedy can open all of her presents!

Thwarted Again

It seems that we will not be going to see the lights in Salt Lake tonight either since it is snowing like mad outside at the moment.  I have been waiting to be able to do a post about this, but I have been thwarted too many times, so since I got a bunch of comments about our first date story, I thought I would go into a little more detail.

Is it lame that I remember my life in food?  Memories of when we met and our first date are entwined with food.  As is everything else for me.  If you know my family, you know we live for food.  On vacation, we never ask what we are going to see or do that day, the bigger questions are where we are eating breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner.  Anyway, Brett and I met in our church choir that he was directing.  As Brett puts it, I was giving him "googley" eyes during the whole rehearsal, which is not the case.  The truth is that he reminded me of my good friend Nathan because they both had a lot of enthusiasm (Nathan when he played the drums, and Brett when he led the choir).  Afterwards, Brett served us all some Blueberry Pineapple Delight that he made himself.  I thought it was amazing and was thoroughly impressed, which I told him.  He then proceeded to invite me and my roommates to Disney night at his apartment.

Disney night had one requirement: you have to sing along.  We watched Aladdin with probably 20 people in the room singing and quoting lines.  That week was Thanksgiving, and we missed each other's calls.  When I came home the next Sunday, I asked about Disney night and Brett said to come on over.  Nobody was there at first, but we decided to watch Robin Hood anyway.  A few people showed up, which was kind of a bummer, but it worked out anyway.  Neither of us wanted me to go home, so we were really happy when one of Brett's roommates suggested that we watch Lord of the Rings.  During that movie Brett got up the nerve to hold my hand and put his arm around me.  We hadn't even been on a date yet!  Not that I minded....

Then he walked me home.  He called the next day (tip for boys, you don't have to wait 48 hours or whatever the rule is) to ask me to a Jazz game on Tuesday night.  I was ecstatic, of course, and couldn't wait.  He came to pick me up, and my roommate thought he was so cute and smelled so good that she almost told him that I wasn't there but she could go instead.  But I did go.  We didn't even really have any small talk, and we were so comfortable with each other, even all the way up to Salt Lake.  We met a friend of his there, ate churros, and watched the lowest scoring game in the history of the Delta Center.  The Jazz scored 52 points.  Ouch.  That night I learned of Brett's love of basketball and his ability to fake anybody out.

I then suggested that we walk to the lights.  I am glad we did, and it's somewhat special since we ended up getting married in that same spot 6 months later.  The lights were beautiful.  We were absolutely freezing though, which gave Brett a nice excuse for holding my hand.  When we got back in the car, the radio started wigging out, and Brett told me that the car was going to die.  So we pulled over to the side of the road and tried to fix it to no avail.  Brett called one of his roommates who was still down in Provo to come get us.  We sat in the car for 45 minutes while it rained and talked.  It was great.  Then we got Taco Bell on the way home because we were both starving.

When we got back to my apartment, we were saying goodnight and Brett took the plunge.  He kissed me, which left me in pretty much no doubt where he stood.  As you all know, it moved pretty quickly from there.  He proposed the first week in January and we were married the following June.  We've been married for 2 1/2 years now and it has been wonderful!  I am so excited for the years to come.

One Week 'Til Christmas

And the baking extravaganza is coming to a close.  I am going to make the Chocolate Oat Toffee Bars in the next couple of days, Cardamom Cookies early next week, and the Sugar Cookie Cutouts for Christmas Eve.  I'm going to round it all out with the only two recipes that actually taste like Christmas to me, Coffee Cake and Yorkshire Pudding.  But in the meantime, here are the Peppermint Snowballs.

Yes, they are pink.  The crushed up peppermint pieces mixed with white stuff like cream cheese and sugar made pink snowballs.  They are actually really pretty.  They aren't overwhelmingly minty, which is nice.

Other than baking, we have been having fun around here trying to keep our new crawler out of her Christmas presents.  She actually ripped off a big chunk of the wrapping paper on one of them today.  So Brett had to keep her entertained by reading her Pat the Bunny.

We are going to see the lights at Temple Square tonight, which I'm really excited about!  Brett and I went to see them on our first date.  We were at a Jazz game, and the arena isn't far from the temple.  Brett wasn't going to take me because he thought it was a little bit presumptuous for a first date, but since I'd never seen them I asked if we could walk over there.  We did, and then we got stuck right before getting on the highway for an hour because his truck broke down.  It was the best date I had ever been on, and Brett must have felt the same way since he kissed me when we got home.