The following post is from Shaina of Food for My Family and Olmanson Photography: A recipe for orange-kissed cranberry quick bread that can be gifted in a jar as a mix or already baked into loaves. I dislike shopping malls, especially around Christmas. Being jostled from behind and elbowed as I stand in line or…
I really, really wanted to try to find a soft gingerbread cookie this year, and with a secret ingredient (cream cheese!), these fit the bill. I played around with a few different recipes to come up with this one but ended up using Shaina's spice blend. I've loved every cookie she's ever made for me,…
During the first 101 Days of Christmas series, I shared Alton Brown's hot cocoa mix recipe, which is perfect for packaging in gifts, but last year we were on the hunt for a homemade hot chocolate recipe that we could pull together easily on the stove from basic ingredients. After testing a few, we finally…
My step-mom, who passed away almost 9 years ago, when our oldest was just a baby, used to make these holly leaf treats every Christmas. We'd all end up with green fingers and teeth from taste testing as we went, and while I'm not a huge fan of food dye, I couldn't resist making them…
My friend Jenny recently posted about these cookies on Facebook, and I asked her for the recipe. It's really just a basic shortbread cookie that she'd found in a holiday baking magazine several years ago, but the use of different flavored extracts makes them extra tasty. With just 4 ingredients, these are easy to whip…
I've worked really hard this year to make sure that none of our projects are duplicates from last year, but today I make an exception. You see, I've been laid up in bed with the flu since Sunday, and there hasn't been much baking or crafting going on in our home, so I decided to…
I'm not a huge fan of peppermint, at least not by itself, but I love a rich peppermint-chocolate dessert. With that in mind, I took my homemade brownie recipe (from Easy Homemade) and doctored it up a bit. The result was these peppermint brownies, and they definitely fit the bill! Ingredients: 2 cups sugar 1-1/2…
This coming weekend, my friend Annette and I are partnering with Glad to host a Christmas Cookie Swap to benefit Cookies for Kids' Cancer, which raises money to support research for new and improved therapies for pediatric cancer. I'll share more about our cookie swap next week, but in the meantime I wanted to share…
When the Genda family shared their advent wreath with us a few weeks ago, Barb also shared her eggnog recipe, with the promise that we would love it! I had been hoping to share a homemade eggnog recipe as part of this year's series anyway, so I asked her if I could share hers, and…
I love walnut cookies, and with their unique shape and chocolate drizzle, these are a fabulous addition to my Christmas recipe box! These would be great to make ahead and freeze. You can go ahead and bake them and then freeze them (but save the chocolate drizzle for after they thaw so that it doesn't…