Holiday Baking and Cooking

We've spent the past few days elbow-deep in baking and preparing for the holidays, and in particular, a neighborhood open house we're hosting this weekend. We're using our friend Kelly's dough-freezing technique, so all the cookies are shaped but still raw in the deep freeze, awaiting the big day. We'll bake them that morning, and they'll be so yummy and fresh for our guests! Thanks, Kelly :) We made our family favorite, big soft ginger cookies, chocolate crinkles, brown sugar crackles, Grandma Tek's sugar cookies (not one of our Grandmas!), sugar cookie cutouts, and nutmeg noels (from my mom!). J did most of the brown sugar crackles all by himself! He rolled out the dough and cut out the shapes. We are so lucky to have such a wonderful helper!

Here is the scene!

Here's the brown sugar crackle man, hard at work (not forgetting the all-important step: tasting!)

Here are the taste testers, hard at work :)


This morning we made my Grandma Coates' caramel corn recipe. She would always put a little baggie full of the yummy confection in our stockings at Christmas, along with funny little wind-up toys and other silly gifts! Oh, and an orange, an apple, some peanuts in the shell as well as some classic Christmas candy.

I haven't made this recipe that often, but it might be time for me to take up the reins of this tradition. After all, my middle name is her first: Ruth.

J helped pop the corn in our Whirly Pop, a fun gift that we got for our wedding, 7 years ago. We use it almost exclusively over microwave popcorn, although I sometimes get a taste for the really unhealthy stuff...

The boys enjoyed some plain popcorn for their morning snack, but we're saving the sweet stuff for later!!!

We also tried to string popcorn but were wildly unsuccessful. What IS the trick there???? Our popcorn kept falling apart...