Thursday, December 20, 2007

Holiday Baking

(c) 2007 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

This is basically the first chance to sit down at the computer without either or both of the girls needing me that I've had since Sunday. Whew.

Monday was the last day Steve the Electrician was going to be here until after holidays, so Pumpkin and I had a baking morning so we could send him home with some treats. We made my mom's famous chocolate chip cookie recipe, plus two from Recipeeps4Us - Syl's Pretzels & Hugs and All Knowing Jen's Oreo Balls.

The pretzels and hugs were great fun. I got to stir up the chocolate chip cookies almost on my own while Pumpkin carefully unwrapped the Hershey's Hugs. There was a bit of "one for the recipe, one for me" going on, but snacking or "quality control" has always been part of my cooking and baking! We made them on square pretzels, and I think they're just calling out for some sort of cute name with "rafts" in it. So if you've got an idea for a cute name, let me know!

The Oreo Balls, while delicious, were rather more challenging. I don't know if I got too large a package of oreos, or if it was that we broke them up by hand and then pounded them inside a ziploc baggie to break them up since we don't have a stand mixer so they weren't fine enough, or what, but when I tried dropping them into the melted chocolate coating, they just fell apart. Not that they were very smooth and round to begin with. So at our house, they're now called "Christmas Coal," because that's really what these delicious but messy treats ended up resembling.

And they are delicious enough that we will be trying them again next year! AKJ, if you have any tips or hints, let me know, because they were good, but didn't seem to turn out quite as I expected.

Our tasty, but not pretty "Christmas Coal"

6 comments:

Allknowingjen said...

We've made the same recipes here! :) The pretzel things are great for toddler helpers.
Though my oreo balls are still chilling to be dipped. I think you are right and you didn't get them fine enough- they have to be really mixed in and the dough should look like, I don't know.. .mud? They may really have to be stirred mechanically somehow. (A hand mixer might help, but they might go flying out of the bowl...) I also chill them once they are ball shaped and that helps keep them together too.
Yours still look yummy though- I would eat them! And I love the stray M&M on the one in the back there.

Pusher said...

Your pretzels and Hugs picture is so artistic! Yay for holiday baking with Pumpkin.

Ms. Huis Herself said...

Thanks for the tips, AKJ. I'll get them finer next time 'cuz mine was definitely NOT mudlike, even thick mudlike.

And the stray M&M, yeah, my "helper" put that there. *grin*

Syl said...

So glad you made the hugs and pretzels - I think we'll be doing some baking on Monday and maybe we'll make them too! I love the idea of the extra m&m on them!

kittenpie said...

You could just call them "Love Boats" since they are hugs and all...
Or maybe Huck Finns, in honour of the raft-iness of them.

Allknowingjen said...

Hee! I think calling them Love Boats is cute!