A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Halloween: Candy Witch's Fingers on Pretzel Rods

Started in 2009, these candy and pretzel rod witch's fingers have become a Halloween tradition at our house.  They look gruesomely cute and, even for adults, their pretty tasty: sweet, creamy, salty, and crunchy. What else could you ask for?

They aren't hard to make at all but they do take time so in assembling the ingredients don't forget the most important:  patience and a couple of free hours.  I've included step by step photos to show how it's done.   Happy Halloween!

Kids Decorate Their Own Cake: Sydney's Butterfly Cake

One of my nieces' and nephew's favorite birthday cakes wasn't one that I decorated elaborately, but that I baked and put borders on, then let them decorate with candy pieces.  Sydney has always had a love affair with butterflies so for her 10th birthday I baked a simple butterfly-shaped cake (Wilton pan), piped purple borders and simple wing marking patterns, bought skittles, M & M's, gumballs, and sweet/sour candies and assigned each of them one quarter of the cake space. 

Look at those serious faces! They enjoyed it, as you can see in later pics, but they took the decorating seriously, carefully choosing their colors and gently placing the candies on the cake. 

Look at those adorable faces!

 I'm pretty sure Sydney LOVED her cake, aren't you? 

 

 

Sydney & Kaylee Birthday Party 2012: Pink Rice Krispy Cake with Buttercream Borders

In my family, as much as we love decorated cakes, we're not very big cake eaters.  At least, not me and my siblings. We grew up the children of a cake decorator so while all of our friends were jealous of the presence of cake and buttercream in our house all the time, we got sick of it!  We often laugh about what rotten kids we were to our Mom who would volunteer to make us any kind of outlandish birthday cakes we wanted but because we had so much cake around us every day we all requested things like my banana bread favorite, our brother Kenneth's angel food cake with no frosting, our dad and brother Carl's pie requests, and my sister Suzanne's Rice Krispy treat wish.  What whiners we were! "Pleeeeeease, Mom. Do not make us eat cake!" What kind of sick children were we?

While we were planning Sydney and Kaylee's birthday party last week Suzanne and I were talking about cake, or the lack of it being okay, and told stories to the nieces and nephew about our childhood brattiness and the fact that Suzanne's wedding cake just out of high school (1988) was made of Rice Krispy treats because she emphatically did not want cake at her wedding.  I see Rice Krispy cakes on Pinterest now all the time and people kind of verbally smack themselves in the head and comment "That's so cool! Why didn't I think of that?"  I'm proud that our Mom was 25 years ahead of her time, making my sister's whole wedding cake from Rice Krispy treats and everyone at the wedding loved it.  After that wedding Mom got tons of orders for rice krispy treat wedding cakes, birthday cakes, and anniversary cakes--she was a wedding cake pioneer in our little town in the Ozarks.

Smiling about all the stories we told, and already having planned to make Rice Krispy treats for the party, I decided to revive Mom's idea and go all the way with the girls' birthday and make it an unforgettable cake.

I'm pretty confidant the girls were pleased! 

Kaylee was really nuts about it!

Candy Cherry & Hershey's Kiss Mice

 

Cute little mice for any occasion. My friend, Jenn, saw these at a holiday party.  They're pretty straight forward:  a chocolate dipped maraschino cherry with a Hershey's kiss and 2 pieces of sliced almond for ears attached with the warm chocolate. Then. piped on pink icing nose and white/blue eyes.

With store-bought tubes of frosting to pipe with, lots of these could be created in about an hour as a cute dessert, gift, or decoration for a party.

They'd make cute decorations for a birthday cake too.

 

 

 

Christmas Food Gifts: Curry-Honeyed Almonds

I only have one thing to say about these:  Gene asked when I was making more.  That says it all! 

All Natural Candy? Sugar Plums

I never thought about "while visions of sugar plums danced in their heads" being a real candy until I read Kate of Kate in the Kitchen's blog post this afternoon about making her own.  It was one of those "no way!" moments for me. After I read the recipe and realized I had everything for them in the house, I decided that I too must make sugar plums dance in my head.

I just really never thought about it. Pushed, I would have assumed sugar plums to be either a sugared dried plum (prune) or a marzipan creation since marzipan fruits were particularly popular in the Victorian era. For more history on marzipan, a centuries old Mediterranean and Arabic traditional sweet, click here:  Marzipan history

The term sugar plum doesn't refer to the fruit, it's a broad term for a boiled sugar/fruit, nut or seed candy shaped as a small round ball .  The confection has been around since the 1600's and the term was used commonly to mean anything that is pleasant.  Also, interesting is that in Victorian times "plum" meant raisins, not the fruit we call a plum today.   

To get the recipe go over to Kate's blog:  http://cooknkate.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/yes-its-those-sugar-plums/   or click to continue the post below.

Like Kate, I used the recipe but subbed a couple of things for what I had.  Having no apricots, I mixed dates and prunes (after all, that is a dried plum) and instead of all almonds, I used a mix of almonds, pecans, and walnuts.  And again, like Kate and funny that I hadn't read her cook's note yet, I also added another spice to the cinnamon, only I went the cardamon route instead of nutmeg. I totally agree with her, though, any combination of those three spices really are each other's best friends.

I really enjoyed these little treats and love the idea that there's nothing processed in them, although I admit that I have a feeling the teens in my family aren't going to be as happy as I was with them.  I can hear them now:  What?  Nuts and fruit? How boring!  As Sydney says:  Psych! More for us, the adults!  Wish I'd thought to put a little spiced rum in them...Oh wait. Then the teens would want them.

Btw, this is my little kitchen Christmas tree. I love it for the primitive look and if you look closely you can see the mini kitchen utensil ornaments:  rolling pin, sieve, pancake turner, ladel, spoon, and whisk.  They are all metal with green, red, or yellow wooden handles.

Time to Make Brittle--Where are My Nuts?

Every year when I make peanut brittle I sort of smile to myself. Gene will eat a couple of pieces and I taste it but that's about it. I make it for my dad and brothers and sisters.  I've said before that the happiest times in our home growing up were the holidays because my mom was a fantastic cook and she loved making candy, cookies, breads, you name it, to give as gfts, take to school parties (back when you could take homemade food), and for our big family party always the first Saturday after Christmas. 

As the oldest daughter I was her sargeant-at-arms in the kitchen EXCEPT when she made nut brittle. Because of the heat in candy making she banished everyone from the kitchen for the afternoon and made a half dozen batches using different nuts, and she did so every single year. It was a smorgasbord of nut brittles. While she worked, it was the one time I got to happily curl up in the window of my room with a book, thankful that I didn't have to be the dishwasher/ingredient runner.  It was a win-win. 

Somehow I did learn how to make it, though, and everything else in her repetoire, something the other daugher and all three boys managed to escape.  You always think your mom will be around forever to make all of your favorite goodies, but for us, that didn't turn out to be the plan, so each year I try to make most of all of our favorites from childhood for the our big extended family party and we remember mom and how much work and love she put into making our holidays wonderful by using her gifts of cooking and knitting.