Holiday Baking

I frequently like to try new things during the holidays. This year I went crazy and tried several new things.

Chocolate bark with pretzels. I also made some with dried cranberries and marshmallow. Fairly easy. I will make the kind with pretzels again, I think.

I decided I wanted to make candy. First I had to purchase molds.

It's a little harder than it looks. After melting the chocolate, filling the molds takes a bit of technique. It took me a few tries to keep from being messy.

Dark chocolate chip cookies. This was the first batch of chocolate chip I ever fixed that didn't turn all that well: I left out a 1/2 cup of butter by mistake.

Fudge. Not a new thing, this is my signature holiday treat. But I am not making as much of this as I once did. I used to make nearly 20 pounds of fudge every year; now I'm down to less than 10.

The candy from the molds. The white or white-colored tasted the best.

Sugar cookies. I burned the first dozen and had a difficult time with the rolling and cutting out. It is a lot easier to just get the Pillsbury dough and make round cookies.

I also made snickerdoodles and butterscotch cookies. During the course of the cooking, I burned up my mixer (a hand mixer) and my husband on Saturday went to Lowe's and bought me a nice KitchenAid mixer. I was surprised. He said it was part of my Christmas. I had no idea that a good mixer could make such a difference in the cooking process, but it certainly does.

I hope that everyone had a good holiday. We woke this morning to snow/sleet/ice. It is still dark as I write this so no photos yet. We'll see what it looks like when the sun comes up.