Baking Cookies and Making More Memories

After spending hours in the kitchen with my daughter making 12 pounds of fudge, I convinced her to help me again the very next day for another mammoth baking session.  Amber was again so much help!  There's no way I could have baked as many cookies as I did without her help.

We baked:

• White chocolate pudding chip cookies
• Butterscotch pudding chip cookies
• Cake balls (Funfetti Christmas cake mix and Funfetti Christmas frosting dipped in white chocolate and milk chocolate)
• Caramel corn

We first made two batches of Pudding-Chip Cookies, one with white chocolate chips and one with butterscotch chips.  Since my children often complain about the lack of homemade goodies around here, I froze about 3 dozen of these cookies for the weeks ahead. 

 

Inspired by Angie at Many Little Blessings, I made Cake Balls for the first time this year.  While the recipe looked incredibly easy, I found them extremely time-consuming to make.  But, as I've mentioned before, I'm no great shakes in the kitchen.  I would really recommend NOT using Funfetti Christmas Frosting.  While the cake/frosting mixture was incredibly yummy, the green cake mixture didn't look good with the white chocolate coating.  Amber pointed out that they looked a bit like moldy meatballs.  The cake balls did look much better dipped in milk chocolate. 

Duncan thought the cake balls were delicious!  They were also a big hit at our Christmas party.  When I make them again, I will definitely refer to this very helpful tutorial on cake balls - I wish I had read it before I made them!  I struggled getting the chocolate coating on the cake balls.  I do think it might have been easier if I had frozen them before I tried dipping them.  I also would definitely use Merckens chocolate wafers to make the dipping chocolate for the cake balls.  I've had a lot of success with melting Merckens wafers in the past and I REALLY struggled getting the milk chocolate chips to the right consistency.   

My husband didn't help with the baking but he was in the kitchen for a while getting the steaks and veggies all prepped for our Christmas Eve dinner.  We like grilled steaks so much, my husband even braves the cold to grill in the winter!

We also made two batches of Caramel Corn.  This is the second year I've made this fabulous and extremely easy recipe from The Happy Housewife.  It's quick, it's easy, and it's delicious - highly recommended!

After we were all done, I prepared cookie tins for each of the families that would be spending Christmas with us.  Included in each of the tins was:

• Butterscotch fudge
• White chocolate fudge
• Milk chocolate/peanut butter fudge
• White chocolate pudding-chip cookies
• Butterscotch pudding-chip cookies
• Cake balls
• Caramel corn (I put a decorative plastic bag of caramel corn on top of each of the cookie tins.)

While I was preparing the cookie tins, Amber got right to work on another Christmas project, finishing a fleece blanket for our dear and loved soon-to-be Step-Grandfather.

While making homemade goodies and handmade gifts is time-consuming, I truly believe from the bottom of my heart that the food and gifts we make with our own hands are the most precious.  Hopefully, these mammoth baking sessions are passing that heartfelt belief on to my own children, and my own daughter in particular.