Holiday Baking. . .

Beth, I know you talked a little about this in your blog about "the Stollen" but I could not help but to talk a little about it too. I love Christmas. It is my most favorite Holiday. I love to cook especially if it involves sweets. I try to bake homemade things and give those to my neighbors. I always enjoy homemade goodies from folks. My cousin always makes us something for Christmas and I love it. I make a lot of the same things my Mom makes for the Holidays. Growing up, she always made; Hello Dollies (7 layer cookies), pecan sandies, fudge, pecan tassies, and chex mix. The dollies are my favorite, they have chocolate chips, nuts, butterscotch chips, and sweetened condensed milk. I guess the dollies are the one thing I would come home for. You know it is getting close to Christmas when Mom is making her Hello Dollies.

To give my goodies to my neighbors and friends I usually buy a festive tray or platter to put them on so that once they are gone they have something to hold on to. I feel it gives it a little something extra. Everyone gets a little sample of what I have baked. If they have kids I usually through in something kid friendly, like chocolate chip cookies. Some kids don't know the joy of the "Dolly". I have tried to make fudge before with no luck. I think it sat on my table for a week and never got hard. I don't do fudge anymore.

My first attempt at making Moms' pecan sandies was terrible. Of course you could imagine since I have issues with getting the recipe written down right. I had written Moms' recipe down wrong. Her recipe called for 1 1/2 cups of flour and I wrote 1 1/2 tbsp of flour. Well, you can imagine what happened when I added the stick of butter. I thought something was weird when they were very sticky. I made them up and put them in the oven and in case you cannot guess what happened. With in minutes my oven was smoking and my cookies were running all over the place. Mark laughed of course. He now calls my pecan sandies the incredible melting cookies. But he loves em. I think my neighbors enjoyed their goodies too. I have since added homemade bread and Moravian sugar cake to my Holiday baking. The homemade bread will be for another post. The sugar cake, however, is to die for. I can whip it up in no time. Most folks like it. My kids love it.

PS: Jack wants to make fudge. He has found a recipe he wants to use. It seems pretty easy, but you know how good I am about reading a recipe. I will save this one for the future.
Stay tuned. . .