Holiday Baking With Kids Part 3

This past Sunday Riley and I made rocky road candy for her teachers' Christmas gifts. It has become a tradition to make it around the holidays for gifts. Everyone always loves it and it is so easy- another great food item to make with kids! We had an older neighbor friend of ours come over and she made gifts for her teachers with us too- so fun! I always get lots of requests for the recipe and thought I would share it with you. I found the cute buckets and baggies at Walmart. They always have a good selection of tins and containers for food giving at a reasonable price.  We had a great time delivering holiday cheer to her school teachers and Sunday school teacher on Monday morning! Have fun making your own memories and remembering those that work so hard for our kids during the year! 

Rocky Road Candy

2 c semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 c mini marshmallows

1/2 c slivered almonds, toasted  on cookie sheet and broil (I have to admit I forgot toasting them this year and they still turned out great!)

 

Melt chocolate chips in microwave safe bowl in thirty second increments stirring often and checking to make sure that they don't burn. After chips are melted, stir in marshmallows and almonds. Drop by teaspoonful on wax paper. Put in freezer for about fifteen minutes. Transfer to containers. Yield: 3 dozen.

Holiday Baking With Kids Part 2

Rolo Pretzel Cookies are another easy item to make with the kids. I use the term cookie loosely as it is more like a candy, but it is called a cookie nevertheless. My four year old Riley and I had a fun time making these together. So easy and everyone loves them! I found this recipe online so long ago that I don't know where it came from, but here it is for you to enjoy!


Rolo Pretzel Cookies
15 oz. bag of waffle pretzels
two bags of the mini Rolo candies
one bag of mini holiday M&M's (or you can use the full-sized ones as well)

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Lay out rows of waffle pretzels on a cookie sheet. Use one pretzel per Rolo you have on hand. Unwrap the Rolo candies and center one on each pretzel. Bake for about three minutes until the chocolate softens. It looks like it is glistening. Working quickly before the chocolate cools, press several holiday M&M's on each Rolo and squish it down. You might not want little hands doing this part as the chocolate can be too hot for them!  Let cookies cool. You can also set the cookies in the frig. I made one cookie sheet and it was plenty for the cookie exchange I was going to and I also had some left for a Christmas gift for our neighbor! They keep well too, so you could make them ahead of time for gifts or a party.

Holiday Baking with Kids Part 1

Today Riley and I did some baking. Since she was with me when I bought all the special cookie ingredients,  she was anxious to get started. We made Red-Nosed Reindeer cookies that I had pulled out of the December issue of Parents magazine several years ago.  I have several cookie exchanges to go to this month and I thought they would be really cute to take and as a bonus they would be really easy to make. I planned to make them last year but when I couldn't find the mini chocolate covered pretzels for the antlers, I gave up and made something else instead. I was so happy this year to easily find all the ingredients.

Initially, I wanted our cookies to come out looking just like the picture in the magazine. I was bummed to realize that the mini M&M's that I bought only had red and green when we needed brown for the eyes. The white icing that I got didn't create a small enough dollup of frosting, so I had to pull out my Wilton Dessert Decorator to create a smaller amount of frosting to place the candies on.

As we continued to work though I realized that we could make a small amount of cookies and use them as our practice ones so really what did it matter except making time for my daughter and having fun. Who cares if ours don't look like the picture? They are still cute and better yet they tasted great!

I included the recipe below for you to try with your little bakers! Have fun!

Theirs

 

Ours

 

Red-Nosed Reindeer Cookies:

1.      Slice pieces from peanut butter cookie dough in half (we used Pillsbury's and you could use the sugar cookie kind as well.)

2.      Shape into 1 1/2" triangles and place 3" apart on cookie sheet.

3.      Bake 8-10 minutes.

4.      While cookies are still warm, push a mini chocolate pretzel (Flipz- found them in the candy aisle) on each side to resemble antlers.

5.      Let cool completely.

6.      Have kids decorate the face: attach brown M&M Minis for eyes and a red regular sized M&M nose with frosting. (Make sure you get the bag that has more than just holiday colors!) Makes 24 but the great thing with this recipe is you can make some and put the rest of the dough in the frig until later. Enjoy!

Summer Manifesto Part 1



So I finally conquered my fear and grilled some corn for the first time last Friday.  I have never in my life shucked an ear of corn and for some reason I have been fearful of doing it. I can’t even recall seeing anyone in my family do it even though I grew up in the south and my family loved corn. I bought two ears of corn during a recent grocery trip thinking the whole time that if it doesn’t turn out I will have only wasted two. Even with them sitting in my refrigerator, I was scared to cook them.  It took almost a week for me to get up the nerve to do it. I have been collecting grilled corn recipes for years so finding a good recipe wasn’t even the issue. Ironically, I finally decided on a version from the recent issue of Healthy Cooking magazine despite all the ones I have collected.  

First, I shucked the corn and it turned out to be so simple that I can’t believe that I made such a big deal of it. All I had to do was pull up the husks and cut off the end. The ears I had barely had any silk on them so even that was simple. I put both ears on a double thickness of aluminum foil. The Healthy Cooking recipe calls for brushing olive oil along with garlic cloves on the ears and then adding a sprinkle of sugar. I improvised by brushing garlic powder along with the  olive oil as it is what I happened to have on hand along with a heavy handed sprinkling of Montreal Steak Seasoning and a pinch of sugar. As my family can tell you, if I grill it I usually put that seasoning on it. It always turns out great on anything you use it on. I especially like to use it on chicken and vegetables that I am grilling. The flavor is really robust as the seasoning is very coarse. The next thing I did was wrap each corn in its own packet and grill on high heat for about 15 minutes.

The result was delicious! The corn was the perfect consistency of crispy and tender. I plan to visit my local farmer’s market and stock up on some locally grown corn because I can only imagine how good this recipe will turn out when I use the best corn possible.  

One Summer Manifesto item successfully completed! Here’s to summer and trying new things! I would love to hear your grilling tips and summer eating ideas.