Christmas Cookies Day #4

This recipe has been made so many times and different ways. But I always come back to this one recipe, it is so good!
I have told this story before, but it is one my Christmas memories. When dad would bring in the Christmas tree, mom would start making this recipe along with the Chocolate Surprise Cookies. Decorating the tree and eating these cookies, was part of the beginning of the Christmas season, for me.

Sugar Jumbles

Cream together:
1/4 cup butter
1/4 shortening
1 cup sugar
1egg
Stir in:
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
Sift together and stir in:
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Chill dough. Drop rounded teaspoonfuls about 2" apart on lightly greased baking sheet. Bake until set but not brown. Bake at 400 degrees F, 8-10 minutes.
Makes 4 dozen 2" cookies.
Can sprinkle with sugar before baking or can iced after the come out of the oven and sprinkle with colorful sprinkles.
We glazed them with white frosting and sprinkle with red and green sugar, or sprinkle with the multi-colored little balls.
Enjoy!

Christmas Cookies Day #3

These are the cookies we make every year, along with Sugar Jumbles. But we call them Chocolate Surprise Cookies. Hope you enjoy them!

Chocolate Marshmallow Drops
1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup cocoa
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup chopped nuts
1/2 cup milk
24 large marshmallows, cut in half
Sift together flour, soda, salt and cocoa, set aside.
Cream shortening, sugar, egg and vanilla until fluffy. Add dry ingredients, alternately with milk.
Add nuts. Drop by teaspoonful onto greased cookie sheet. Bake in pre-heated 375 degrees for 8 minutes. Remove and top each cookie with a marshmallow half, cut side down. Return to oven and bake 4 minutes longer. When cool glaze with cocoa glaze.

Cocoa Glaze
2 cups powdered sugar, sifted with 1/2 cup cocoa.
Gradually stir in 4 to 6 tablespoons hot milk until soft enough to spread easily.

Christmas Cookies Day #2

Another page from the same newspaper as yesterdays. Los Angeles Times Dec 1995! Cookie recipes are Chocolate Macaroons; Macadamia and Coconut Bars. These recipes come from a cookbook by Maida Heatter. I google searched her name and read some fun things about her cooking skills.



Chocolate Macaroons
1 1/3 cups blanched almonds
1 ounce semisweet chocolate, chopped
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
pinch salt
3 egg whites

• Toast almonds in shallow pan in 350-degrees oven for about 10 or 12 minutes, shaking pan or stirring nuts once or twice. Set aside to cool.
• Chop 12 almonds into small pieces and set aside. Grind remaining almonds in food processor with chocolate, sugar cocoa and salt until fine, about 30 seconds. With motor running, add egg whites through feed tube and process until mixed.
• Shape mixture into round cookies about 1 inch apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper of aluminum foil. Either use pastry bag fitted with 1/2-inch plain round tube or drop from teaspoon. Sprinkle tops with chopped nuts.
• Bake at 350 degrees, reversing sheets top to bottom and front to back once during baking, until macaroons feel soft but dry, not sticky, about 10 minutes. Do not overbake.
• With metal spatula, transfer macaroon to rack to cool. Store in airtight container or loosely covered.
  

Makes about 20 macaroons.

Macadamia and Coconut Bars
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cups light brown sugar, lightly packed
3 eggs
salt
1 1/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons sifted flour
1 1/2 cups salted macadamia nuts
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla 2 1/2 cups shredded coconut, lightly packed

• Wet inside of 13x9-inch pan and line with aluminum foil. Butter foil. Chill pan in freezer or refrigerator.
• Beat butter until soft. Add 1/2 cup brown sugar and beat until well-mixed. Beat in 1 egg and 1/4 teaspoon salt, and then, beating on low speed, add 1 1/4 cups flour and beat only until incorporated.
• Place mixture by very small spoonfuls all over bottom of cold pan. Then, with floured fingertips, carefully, patiently and slowly spread dough in even layer all over bottom of pan, re-flouring fingertips often. Bake at 350 degrees until set, about 15 minutes. Remove pan from oven and let stand. Do not turn off oven.
• Shake nuts gently in wide strainer to remove excess salt; set aside.
• Sift together 2 tablespoons flour, pinch salt and baking powder; set a side.
• Beat remaining 2 eggs, vanilla extract and remaining 1 cup brown sugar until thoroughly mixed. Beat in sifted ingredients. Gently stir in 1 1/2 cups coconut (reserve remaining) and nuts.
• Place mixture by tablespoon evenly over top of bottom layer. Then, with bottom of spoon, spread into smooth, very thin layer. Sprinkle with remaining 1 cup coconut.
• Bake at 350 degrees, reversing pan front to back once during baking, until top is richly browned and toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean, about 25 minutes.
• Cool, then cover with baking sheet and turn upside down. Remove pan and carefully peel off foil. Cover with wax paper and another baking sheet or cutting board and turn upside down again, leaving cake right-side up.
• Refrigerate for a few hours or more or place in freezer for about 1 hour. Cut into 32 even bars. Wrap each bar in either clear cellophane or wax paper, or place bars in airtight container with wax paper between layers.
• Makes 32.
  

Christmas Cookies Day #1

Christmas Cookies are really any cookie recipe that you make special for Christmastime. I will put at least 7 days worth of recipes here from my mom's recipe box. Hope you bake at least one of them this Christmas season. So many memories of our past Christmastimes.

Here is an interesting recipe from the box. I google search Billy Goats Cookies trying to find out how this recipe came about. Someone suggested that it is a recipe from possibly the 1940’s or 1950’s. Because they are bumpy and look somewhat like a bumpy goat. I was hoping to find that some mother was reading to their child the story of the ‘3 Billy Goats Guff’. As she was reading, had these delicious date cookies in the oven and called them ‘Billy Goat Cookies’. Well I can imagine can’t I ??? Where ever the name comes from, I really don’t know, but they sure sound like a good cookie. I love dates!

In this article Tracey says she got the recipe from her Aunt Betty and her grandmother before that. This article was from 1995. So I could see where this recipe would at least had to of been from the 1950’s.

Billy Goats (about 3 dozen cookies)

½ cup butter

1 ½ cups brown sugar, packed

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups flour

Dash salt

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 cup chopped dates

½ cup chopped walnuts

• Cream butter and sugar until light. Beat in eggs, 1 at a time, and vanilla extract.
• Sift together flour, salt and baking soda and add to butter mixture. Stir in dates and walnuts.
• Drop rounded teaspoons of batter onto greased baking sheet. Bake at 350˚F until light brown on top, about 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

On the back of this article was some cool recipes for Hanukkah. So to all of my good friends who celebrate Hanukkah, these are for you! I see Hanukkah is spelled with one 'k' or 2 'k's'. Click on the paper to make it bigger to read. Enjoy!

Christmas Candies Day #7

Last day of putting on some of the recipes collected by my mom of candies. I don't know who is Doris of my mother's friends. So this must of been a lady she worked with at one of her jobs.
Does anyone know if mom made this recipe? Sounds super rich.

Almond Bark Sqaures
24 ounces white almond bark
4 heaping tablespoons peanut butter (1 pound jar) -see note
Heat together in large bowl in microwave until melted. Mix and cool.

Add:
4 cups mini marshmallows
4 cups Rice Krispies
1 pound jar dry roasted peanuts
Mix well and put on buttered cookie sheet.

Note: it seems 4 heaping tablespoons could equal 1/3 cup.

Did google search this recipe and found many different versions of the recipe, here is just one of the sites:
http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/729/Almond-Bark-Rice-Krispies-With131682.shtml

Christmas Candies Day #6

If you google search fantasy fudge you will see many, many recipes and different ways to make this candy. So here is the one recipe of Fantasy Fudge that was in mom's recipe box!



Fantasy Fudge
Prep time: 10 minutes
3/4 cup margarine (1 1/2 sticks, I use butter)
3 cups sugar
2/3 cup evaporated milk
1 package (12 0unces) chocolate chips
1 jar marshmallow creme
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup chopped nuts

Microwave cooking time: 12 minutes

Microwave:

• Microwave margarine in 4-quart microwave-sage bowl on HIGH 1 minuted or until melted. Add sugar and milk; mix well.
• Microwave on HIGH 5 minutes or until mixture begins to boil, stirring after 3 minutes. Mix well; scrape bowl. Continue microwaving 5 1/2 minutes; stir after 3 minutes.
• Stir in chips until melted. Add remaining ingredients; mix well. Pour into greased 9-inches square pan or 13x9-inch baking pan. cool at room temperature; cut into squares. Makes 3 pounds.

Enjoy!

Christmas Candies Day #5

Here are the best home-made chocolates I have ever tasted!!! Of course, I might think this because I grew-up eating these! Mom got the recipe from our neighbor, Audrey (who just happens to be my best friend's mom). Boy, in the 60's we sure had good foods! By that I mean good comfort foods and special goodies for the Christmas season. Hopefully, most of you are still carrying on your family traditions and baking! If not, start something you enjoy making just for your family and see if it will continue on.
I hope you will enjoy making and eating these delicious chocolates. They are a lot of work, but well worth the effort.

I just talked to Debbie and she thinks her mom got the recipe from her mother-n-law. So that would be on the Palmquist side. Pretty cool!

The flavors we enjoyed are coconut, wintergreeen, black walnut, vanilla, chocolate, lemon and strawberry extracts. Mom made a few with cherries in them. There is one basic recipe. You can add the flavors you like best. You can't go wrong with any of them.

Enough thinking on it, here is the recipe:

Hand Dipped Chocolates
1/2 pound butter (soft)
2 pound powdered sugar
1 can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk
nuts, candied cherries (plain vanilla for cherries), coconut, any liquid extracts

Work butter and sugar together like pie crust. Add can milk; beat by hand until smooth. Divide for flavors (up to 3 bowls is just right) and add nuts or coconut, or any liquid extracts (small drops - depending on how many times you divide the dough for different flavors, anywhere from 1/4 teaspoon to 1/2 teaspoon). Mix in your flavors and put each into separate bowls. Refrigerate the small bowls for 2-3 days**; covered.
On the second or third day, roll or shape using powdered sugar on hands while shaping. Size of a small walnut. Take the ball and put onto cookies sheets lined with wax paper. Cover and refrigerate again for a couple of days. Put in freezer on morning of dipping. Melt semi-sweet chocolate (or can use almond bark chocolate) over hot water.

To package of chocolate add 2 tablespoons melted paraffin wax, (of course we don't do this any more, that is why I suggested using almond bark or I like to use the Wilton brand of light chocolate disks.)
Can you believe we use wax to dip chocolates in?
Dip candy in chocolate and place on waxed paper lined cookie sheets.

**I shorten this time wise just by refrigerating in bowl on day one, rolling out day 2 and putting in freezer. Then dipping on day 3. After dipping, keep candies refrigerated.**
Today we have many different types of chocolates, light, dark or even white chocolates. Experiment and see which chocolates you like best.

Thanks Debbie for the memories!

Depending on how many flavors you want, you might need to make this twice. Each recipe does 3 good flavors. I have on my recipe that we started making around 1965.
Enjoy!!!

I also decided to add this recipe here as it is also a great candy! These taste close to the See's coconut candy. Notice I said close to, because you can't copy See's candy, they are the best! I don't know how this recipe got it's name, but it sure is a good one. Also received this from a great lady when I lived in Houston, back in 1975.

Martha Washington Chocolate Covered Candy
3 cups nuts
1 can Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk
2 cups coconut
1 stick butter (1/2 cup)
2 pounds powdered sugar
Combine ingredients; roll in small balls and cool on waxed paper in refrigerator.
On day 2 dip in your favorite melted chocolate. Drain and cool on wax paper lined cookie sheets. Keep refrigerated until you serve them.
Enjoy!