Holiday

Favorite Gifts for the Host (+ GIVEAWAY)

December 23, 2014 by Amy 5 Comments

Disclosure: I was sent a sampler of Orchard Choice fig spread, in exchange for a post that included their products, by Valley Fig Growers (made possible by KitchenPLAY). Valley Fig Growers is also providing the giveaway item. All opinions are 100% my own.

With Christmas in a couple of short days, I’m sure that quite a few of y’all (myself included) are hosting or going to holiday meals with loved ones. One of the few things I often forget to do is to thank the host/hostess with a small gift. Quite a few people like to bring a bottle of wine or a bouquet of flowers, but I much prefer bringing something food related. It can be anything from a homemade food gift to a fun food product that I think is worth sharing with others.

Here’s some of my favorites:

Peppermint Bark Brown Sugar Lip Scrub (+ GIVEAWAY)

December 7, 2014 by Amy 8 Comments

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post on behalf of Dixie Crystals. I received products in exchange for this post. They also supplied the items for the giveaway. All opinions are my own.

This past week, I started wrapping Christmas gifts to place under the tree. The day after Thanksgiving, my husband took down the gift wrapping boxes from the attic, and I just had a wrapping spree. Gift wrapping takes me a while, because I try to make the packaging as pretty as possible, just because I enjoy the heck out of it. Wire ribbons, festive paper, gift tags…so fun! When I was younger, I remember watching my mom meticulously wrap presents for others. She would make these gorgeous bows, to where they were almost too pretty to unwrap. She is so skilled at it…she can wrap nearly anything. I’m pretty sure that she would put mall gift wrappers to shame.

When I wrap gifts, I like to add a fun little gift on the outside, whether it’s a candy cane, lip gloss or a mini ornament. It just adds a little something to the gift, and it’s easy to tie or tape on. This year, these brown sugar lip scrubs are going to be part of our gifts. The chocolate and mint are just a perfect combination for the holidays, and with brown sugar, along with coconut oil, they not only exfoliate, they also moisturize like crazy!

Dixie Crystals has so many great homemade sugar scrub recipes, and since I gifted peppermint sugar scrub as a gift last year, I wanted to go with a lip scrub this year. With the winter as crazy cold as it’s been so far (it reached the 20s a couple of weeks ago), this lip scrub is definitely needed.

I placed the lip scrub in these mini (food-safe) glass jars that I found at a craft store. I then placed them in these large, ornament shaped plastic balls that you can pop open, and on the inside, I added thin, red tinsel and this leafy looking pipe cleaner with the lip scrub jar. Festive, right?

This brown sugar lip scrub couldn’t be easier to make. You just throw the ingredients in a bowl, mix and add to clean, food-safe jars of your choice.

Peppermint Bark Brown Sugar Lip Scrub
Source: slightly adapted from Dixie Crystals

Ingredients:

3 tbsp. cocoa powder

1 1/2 cups Dixie Crystals packed light brown sugar

1 tbsp. vanilla extract

1/4 tsp. mint extract

1/3 cup coconut oil, melted and cooled

Directions:

Mix all ingredients in a medium-sized bowl, until everything is combined well.

Place in containers, and gift! They keep for 2 months, when kept in a cool, dry place.

To use, place a small amount on the lips and gently swirl around in a circular motion for at least a minute. When done, rinse the scrub off in cool water or if you want a sugar-y treat, you can lick this off, too.

The generous folks at Dixie Crystals are offering a lucky reader of The Nifty Foodie the ultimate sugar prize package! As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a big fan of Dixie Crystals’ products, so this is perfect if you enjoy baking!

The prize includes:

Five 4-lb. bags of Dixie Crystals granulated sugar
Six 2-lb. bags of Dixie Crystals light brown sugar
Six 2-lb. bags of Dixie Crystals dark brown sugar
Six 2-lb. bags of Dixie Crystals powdered sugar

To enter, use the Rafflecopter widget below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Note: This giveaway is supplied by Dixie Crystals and is open to readers in the continental US only. Entries will be accepted until December 11th, 2014 at 11:59am (central standard time). Winner will be emailed (make sure you leave an email address in the form), and will have 48 hours to respond or another winner will be chosen.

Filed Under: Crafts, Giveaways/Reviews, Holiday

My Ultimate Gift Guide + GIVEAWAY!

November 18, 2014 by Amy 16 Comments

Disclosure: I was sent an Aerogarden 3SL at no cost to me, for a fair and honest review, by Miracle Gro (through KitchenPLAY). They also supplied me with the giveaway item. All opinions are 100% my own.

I’ve been asking my husband almost every day if I can convince him to go in the attic and bring down all of our Christmas decorations. The answer never changes…”Wait until Thanksgiving.” Well, next week is Thanksgiving!!

Also…next week is Thanksgiving? Dang!

It’s getting to be that point of the year where family/friends are asking me what I want for Christmas. While I can’t really figure things out (besides new plates/bowls in our kitchen…how boring!), I figured I’d share my favorite things that I’ve been using this year. Maybe this will inspire your wish lists? Who knows…but I figured I would share some of my favorite things with you guys, and also offer a pretty awesome giveaway (at the bottom of this post, if you make it that far…) :-).

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Filed Under: Giveaways/Reviews, Holiday

Hosting your First Thanksgiving & Giveaway!

November 14, 2014 by Amy 21 Comments

Disclosure: Butterball provided me with a turkey gift check, as well as two other turkey gift checks to giveaway, in exchange for a post. All opinions are 100% my own.

I’ve always been a fan of having big family gatherings for holiday meals. I used to watch my mom, aunts and my grandma flawlessly host Thanksgiving year after year, so when I got married, I thought I would give it a try. I mean, how hard could it be?

I’ll never forget that first year. I ran out of counter space, I ran out of oven space, I ran out of time…I mean, there was a meal at the end, but I was a stressed-out mess. I learned quite a few things, and ever since, while there’s always SOMETHING that doesn’t quite go as planned, our holiday meals have been a whole lot better.

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Filed Under: Giveaways/Reviews, Holiday

Red Velvet Peppermint Bark

December 13, 2013 by Amy 1 Comment

One of the things I can’t get enough of lately is peppermint + chocolate. I’m obsessed with Chick Fil-A’s peppermint chocolate chip shake, and I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten half a bag of Candy Cane kisses. It’s just insane how much I love it, because usually I could give or take peppermint bark. Eggnog is usually my thing. I’m really not sure what’s gotten into me, but I’m not complaining!

I originally saw the idea for cake batter bark on How Sweet It Is. I’ve been wanting to do it with red velvet, and thought that it would be so festive to use red velvet cake mix in peppermint bark. The results were great! One of my coworkers tasted it, and then grabbed 4 pieces haha! It’s also very simple to make, and it makes a good bit!

I packaged these in simple printed cello bags, and added Christmas sprinkles with the crushed candy canes for a more Christmas-y touch. Y’all know I’m all about sprinkles!

Red Velvet Peppermint Bark
Source: inspired by How Sweet It Is

Ingredients:

1/2 lb. dark or semi-sweet chocolate, chopped

1/2 lb. white chocolate, chopped

1 tsp. canola oil (divided)

3 1/2 tbsp. red velvet dry cake mix

10 mini candy canes, crushed

Christmas sprinkles

red powdered food coloring

Directions:

Melt the 1/2 lb. of dark/semi-sweet chocolate in a microwave safe bowl, along with 1/2 tsp. of the canola oil, until melted. You’ll want to do this in 30 second increments at 50% power, being sure to stir well between each microwave cycle. Pour and spread the chocolate, using a spatula, on top of a silicone baking mat or parchment paper. Allow it to set for 15 minutes.

Melt the 1/2 lb. of white chocolate with the remaining 1/2 tsp. of canola oil, until melted. Microwave this in 30 second increments as well, at 50% power, being sure to stir well between each microwave cycle. Mix in the dry cake mix, as well as the powdered food coloring (a little at a time until desired color is achieved), until everything is well combined. Pour this over the set dark chocolate and spread the red velvet white chocolate carefully, making sure to cover the dark chocolate. Sprinkle the crushed candy canes and Christmas sprinkles liberally over the red velvet white chocolate.

Allow the bark to cool completely before breaking into pieces and serving.

Filed Under: Chocolate, Desserts, Holiday, Holiday Recipes

2013 Holiday Bake-Palooza

December 9, 2013 by Amy 2 Comments

This past weekend was a busy one in our kitchen. We had our annual holiday bake-palooza for coworker/neighbor gifts! I think after doing this for 4 years, we have figured out a good system for doing this. We were done much earlier than I anticipated, which is awesome.

At the end of the weekend, this was what we ended up with. The packaging this year was a mish-mash of items from Wal-Mart, Target, Hobby Lobby, Pick Your Plum, TJMaxx & World Market. This year was a year to use up leftover packaging from previous years, so nothing is really uniform. However, it doesn’t really matter to me, because I think it looks really fun sitting together.

The recipes that we decided on this year were:

pumpkin snickerdoodles
molasses spice cookies
perfect chocolate chip cookies w/ holiday M&Ms (recipe coming soon)
Mom’s fudge
eggnog cranberry bread
elf’s mix
homemade caramels (recipe coming soon)
chocolate bark (recipe coming soon)

To divide things up, about a month ago, I made all of the cookie dough and froze it using this method in the post. Then on Friday, we made all of the candy (2 batches of fudge, caramel, elf’s mix & bark)., and on Saturday, we baked up all of the cookies and made the bread. It really wasn’t bad at all, compared to previous years. The biggest time saver is making all of the cookie dough in advance, especially when you’re making 3-4 batches of each cookie dough.

These are trays that I made for each of our offices. I purchased these at Wal-Mart for $3, and they come with a lid and a handle. They hold a ton, which is perfect since we wanted to give our coworkers a nice variety of things to enjoy.

This is the inside of the tin in the first picture. We gave these gifts to neighbors, and they were the perfect size. We squeezed in some fudge, homemade caramels, as well as cookies.

Since I work on a very small team, I wanted to give little bags of treats to them as well. Sure, they could pull from the large break room tray that I made, but since my office is pretty large, I wanted to make sure they had their share of the goodies too.

Have you done any holiday baking yet? When do you plan on baking for holiday gifting?

Filed Under: Holiday, Holiday Recipes

Tree & Wreath Cupcakes

December 6, 2013 by Amy 1 Comment

This weekend is the grand bake-palooza in our house. I have the bags of pre-scooped cookie dough ready, and went on one last Target run for necessary ingredients for Mom’s fudge, Elf’s Mix & a few other recipes that I’ll be sharing on here soon. I just love making these gifts every year…edible gifts are always a winner, and it’s fun to package them up. I’m a sucker for treat boxes, cellophane and a ton of curling ribbon.

This week, I was just itching to throw some cupcakes together. Sometimes, I just have to take those old Wilton tips out and go crazy with buttercream. I actually first attempted these with a grass tip, and they just looked so messy. However, a star tip (#21) did the trick.

I didn’t take pictures of every step with these cupcakes, because they’re pretty simple to pipe out, and you can easily see where I piped the stars.

I started off by thinly frosting (completely cooled) cupcakes with a layer of un-dyed vanilla buttercream (I used this recipe for the buttercream). To make the trees, I started with 5 stars on the bottom, then a row of 4 (between each star in the 5 row), and then 3, 2, 1. For the wreaths, I piped two stars next to each other, and continued in a circle around the whole cupcake. To make the bows, I just used a small round tip (#5) and piped a sideways “8”, and added the edges. The ornaments were made using the same tip, in small, random dots in the gaps of the piped stars. The tree trunks were piped with the same round tip in brown frosting.

I think these cupcakes would be especially festive with a confetti cupcake recipe, using holiday colored jimmies!

Are any of y’all baking this weekend for the holidays? I’d love to hear about what’s baking in your kitchen. I’m sure I’ll be tweeting about the flour/confectioner’s sugar clouds in my kitchen.

Filed Under: Cakes/Cupcakes, Holiday, Holiday Recipes

Holiday Cards from Minted & A Giveaway!

December 5, 2013 by Amy 42 Comments

As much as I love Christmas, one thing I’ve always gone back and forth on was our Christmas card. Since it’s just me and my husband, nothing really changes in the pictures from year to year, and we don’t really take many posed photos together. Since we never have a picture of us for a Christmas card, who were we going to feature?

Well, one year I decided to take pictures of our dog, Millie. I wasn’t sure if it would be well-received or not, but people loved them! It became our little tradition. Every year, I found it so fun to put Christmas decorations around her (closely watching her, of course), and take probably 100 pictures, praying that she didn’t move since there was a large treat above the camera lens for her to stare at and drool over (which usually resulted in the perfect puppy smile).

This was last year’s picture. I mean seriously…how adorable is that?

So, this year, when I was looking for Christmas cards, I was hoping to find a card with a more pet-centric message. Usually I’d buy something that said “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas” from (our last name) and leave it at that. However, this year, I discovered these holiday cards from Minted.com, and included in that are some cards that are specifically meant for pet photos!

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Filed Under: A Paw-Fect Life, Giveaways/Reviews, Holiday

Christmas Cookies & A Giveaway!

November 29, 2013 by Amy 34 Comments

It’s now socially acceptable to decorate with all of the Christmas things! I just felt like stating that to you guys.

Since it’s now officially the holiday season, I think I’m going to ask a certain husband who isn’t afraid of heights to go in the attic and grab all of the Christmas decor. ::fingers crossed:: I seriously can’t take 3 steps on a ladder without taking deep breaths and telling myself “I think I can…I think I can…”.

I just love making cookies for the holidays. I bake so many for gifts, since it’s always a winner with coworkers and neighbors. I learned a great trick when it comes to baking in bulk for the holidays…make your dough in advance to freeze and then bake them all later. It makes things a lot easier when you’re making dozens of cookies at once.

What also makes things easier while baking is knowing that your favorite recipes will always come out the same when using quality ingredients. Over the past few years, I’ve learned that good, quality ingredients really do make a difference in your baking. For example, I used to grab store brand flour, and the results of my baking weren’t always consistent. I really thought it was me making a mistake in the recipe, but when I switched to a bag of King Arthur Flour, my favorite recipes come out the same way every time. I will admit that King Arthur Flour is slightly pricier than store brands, but to me, it’s worth it to use a brand that has such high quality standards when it comes to flour. You don’t have to order their flour online only either…they carry their flour at so many stores now (I recently saw their flour at Walmart for $3.95/bag!). Also, I’ve seen quite a few of their baking products, like espresso powder (which is so hard for me to find anywhere else…is it just me?) and specialty extracts, at Sur La Table.

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Filed Under: Cookies, Giveaways/Reviews, Holiday, Holiday Recipes

Peppermint Swirl Sugar Scrub & A Giveaway!

November 27, 2013 by Amy 19 Comments

**NOTE: This gift is NOT edible. This sugar scrub is NOT for consumption…it’s a bath/body product.**

I just thought I’d get that out of the way, since all of the other gifts in this blog series are food related….this one is not, due to the use of essential oils.

I love this time of the year, but one of the biggest issues I face is how drying the winter is, especially on my hands. I use so much lotion throughout the winter, and sadly, with all of the cooking/baking that I do, the constant hand washing doesn’t make things any better. It’s probably because the winter sucks the humidity out of Louisiana, but I’m always prepared with shea butter hand lotion and some sort of moisturizing scrub. I know a scrub sounds counter-intuitive, but a sugar scrub exfoliates with the sugar and also moisturizes your skin using the oil. It always leaves my hands feeling nice and soft. I thought that it would be a great gift idea to make these for the other women in my family, since we all go through the same thing this time of the year!

When I saw this idea for a Peppermint Swirl scrub on Dixie Crystals’ website, I knew that this was going to be a winner. I just love minty scents around this time of the year, and since I’m making it myself, I’m able to control the scent (which is great, because some mint scents can smell too overpowering).