The Nifty Foodie

I can’t believe it’s Christmas Day! This is my favorite holiday of the whole year, so of course, I had to make cookies for the occasion.

I know this is random, but I just wanted to share a local Christmas carol that just doesn’t feel like Christmas to me unless I watch this during the season. If you’ve been to NOLA (or, of course, lived in NOLA), you might have heard of a few of these things/places.

Hope you and your families have a wonderful holiday! Merry Christmas!

This past weekend was what I call my annual “bake-palooza”. When it comes to coworkers and neighbors, I just find it much easier to gift food. My idea is…when in doubt, give food.

Every year, I have so much fun coming up with the recipes for gifts. I have so many ideas written on paper, but I usually narrow things down to 5-6 recipes, just to remain sane. This was a new recipe for gifts, and it couldn’t have been easier. I based it off of bunny bait, which I bookmarked on my friend Amy’s blog. Of course, I changed the mix up to make it more Christmas-y and added holiday oreos for an even more fun Christmas colored addition.

The mixture of sweet and salty ingredients is what makes this mix so awesome, and just to let you know, it makes a LOT. I thought I’d have to make a double batch, but after making one batch, I realized I had more than enough for gifts.

Of course, I wasn’t going to call this bunny bait since, well, it’s not Easter. I had to call it something else. When I had it cooling on a silicone mat, I kept telling myself it looked like a Christmas elf barfed in my kitchen. Kinda gross, I know. Since I don’t have to guts to name a dessert “Elf’s Barf”, I decided to play it safe and call it “Elf’s Mix”.

Elf’s Mix
adapted from Sing For Your Supper‘s “Bunny Bait”

Ingredients:

• 1 bag of popped microwave popcorn
• 6 oz. almond bark
• 1 bag of mint M&Ms
• 15 holiday oreos, chopped
• 2 cups of pretzel sticks, broken into small pieces
• Christmas sprinkles

Directions:

1. Place the popped popcorn, pretzel sticks, M&Ms and oreos in a large bowl or pot. Place 4 oz. of almond bark in the microwave in 30 second increments, until well-melted.
2. Add the melted almond bark to the popcorn mixture and stir the mixture thoroughly. Spread the mixture out on a large silicone mat or wax paper. Top with Christmas sprinkles.
3. At this time, microwave the additional 2 oz. of almond bark in a disposable plastic piping back in 30 second increments until well-melted. Then, snip the end off of the bag and randomly pipe the almond bark over the popcorn mix. Allow the mixture to cool.
4. To serve, break up the mix into pieces and place in a bowl. Enjoy!

I absolutely love making holiday treats. You know it’s the holiday season in our house when our fridge has at least 5 lbs. of butter, 8-10 packages of cream cheese at any given time and 2 extra bags of flour and sugar in the pantry to ensure that I don’t run out of the essentials.

The big bake-palooza (as I like to call it) is this weekend. There’s quite a few coworker and neighbor gifts to make this year, which has me super excited! This year’s packages are going to have some old favorites and new ones too, which I plan on sharing with y’all next week.

While this particular recipe won’t be with the gifts this year (since they need to be refrigerated), I wanted to share these truffles with y’all, since this is still a delicious recipe if you’re looking for something to include with your holiday parties. I came up with this recipe for a local recipe contest with the newspaper. I was actually torn between an eggnog inspired dessert and a peppermint bark inspired dessert. This recipe idea won out though, because after asking some friends, it seems like a peppermint bark inspired recipe would be more popular, since quite a few people hate eggnog. Fair enough.

The great thing about these truffles is that they come together pretty quickly. It’s definitely an easy dessert recipe to add to your holiday menu! Just keep in mind since the recipe involves cream cheese, these truffles can’t sit out for too long without needing to be refrigerated. They actually taste a lot better cold anyway.

So, I’m sure you’re wondering how these little truffles did in the recipe contest! I won first place! FIRST PLACE! I still can’t believe it. The prize was a big deal too… $1000 to a local furniture store! (I can’t wait to share with y’all what we used that generous prize on, but I’ll save that for another post once it’s delivered.)

I’m also supposed to be in the paper tomorrow. Crazy, right? I’m completely giddy about that! I’m sure I’ll buy multiple copies for family.

Peppermint Bark Cheesecake Truffles
Source: an original

Ingredients:

For the filling:

• 1 pkg cream cheese, slightly softened
• 5 candy canes
• 1/4 cup confectioner’s sugar
• 1 cup (appx. 6 large) ground graham crackers
• 1/4 cup white chocolate chips, chopped

For the coating:

• 2 cups of white chocolate chips or almond bark
• 1/2 cup of semi-sweet or milk chocolate chips
• 2 crushed candy canes

Directions:

1. With a spatula, whip up the cream cheese to a stirrable consistency.
2. Using a food processor, grind 3 of your candy canes to a powder. Stir the ground candy canes, powdered sugar and ground graham crackers into the cream cheese with a spatula until everything is well-incorporated.
3. Place the last two candy canes in a quart sized plastic ziploc-type bag, and using a heavy bowl, crush up the candy canes into small pieces (not quite a powder, since you want these to add a bit of a crunch to your truffles). Add the candy canes, along with the chopped white chocolate to your cream cheese truffle mixture.
4. Chill the mixture well, for four hours or overnight.
5. When ready to assemble the truffles, divide the mixture into tbsp. sized balls and put the balls on a cookie sheet. By the time you’re done making the truffle balls, the mixture probably warmed up a bit, so place the cheesecake balls in the freezer for 5-10 minutes to firm up.
6. In the meantime, melt your white chocolate for the coating (either in the microwave or with a double boiler).
7. Take your cheesecake balls out of the freezer, and individually dip each ball in the white chocolate mixture. Place the finished dipped balls on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper for the chocolate to set.
8. Once the white chocolate has set, melt your milk or semi-sweet chocolate chips and add a small amount on top of each truffle, along with some crushed candy canes for decoration.
9. Enjoy these cheesecake truffles right out of the refrigerator and keep the truffles cold, since there is cream cheese in the recipe.

It’s one of the hugest compliments when someone asks you to bring the same dish for a holiday, year after year. When it comes to my coworkers, they always just expect that I’m bringing a cheesecake again. Cheesecakes are easy, so I have no problem with making them for work potlucks.

However, with my family, I decided to take a leap last year and make eggnog macarons. Little did I know that these would be a hit. I was intimidated by these cookies, and there was a great reason. When you live in humid place like Louisiana, you can’t help but be intimidated by something that relies heavily on egg whites. So, fast forward to November. I asked my mom if my husband and I should bring something for Thanksgiving, and at first, she said that nothing was necessary. Then, three days before, she, along with my aunt, requested macarons. Guess they’re spoiled now!

I didn’t want to repeat eggnog macarons, since it’s Thanksgiving. So, I looked through a few sites until I decided on this idea: pecan pie macarons. Living in the South, pecan pies are a staple in the Thanksgiving feast, so this was going to be absolutely perfect!

So, the day I start to make the macarons, I go to look for my round piping tip. Uhhh…turns out it was another victim of the move since it’s gone.  So, I tried the star piping tip. I figured it would flatten out within the hour that the macarons had to sit out before baking, but they didn’t. I’m sort of happy they didn’t flatten out though…the star shaped macarons turned out pretty darn cute!

Instead of doing both the caramel sauce and pecan brittle for the filling, I ended up using the caramel sauce with chopped pecans in the filling. These were definitely a popular item on Thanksgiving Day, since by the time I was picking up leftovers, they were pretty much all gone. Yay!

I guess that means I should start thinking about what macarons to make for the next holiday get together with my family, eh?

Pecan Pie Macarons
Source: Tartelette

Ingredients:

Note: With macarons, it’s definitely important that your ingredients are weighed, so all measurements are in grams.

     For the macarons:

• 3 egg whites (about 90 grams)
• 40 grams granulated sugar
• 200 grams powdered sugar
• 55 grams almonds
• 55 grams pecans

     For the filling:

• chopped pecans
• one recipe of salted butter caramel sauce, well chilled in the fridge

Directions:

1. For the egg whites, 2-3 days before separate your eggs and store the whites in a covered container in the fridge.
2. In a stand mixer with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites until they foam, gradually adding granulated sugar until you reach a glossy meringue. Be careful not to overbeat, since the meringue can easily dry out.
3. Place the almonds, pecans and powdered sugar in a food processor and pulse the mixture until the nuts are finely ground.
4. Add the mixture to the meringue, give it a quick couple of folds to break down some of the air and then, slow down and fold the mass gently until the batter flows like magma or thick ribbon. The whole folding process shouldn’t take more than 50 strokes.
5. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a round tip (or star one if you’re crazy like me) with the macaron batter and pipe small cookies (about 1.5 inches in diameter) onto a Silpat or parchment paper lined baking sheet.
6. Let the macarons sit out for 30 minutes – 1 hour to allow the shells to harden a bit. In the meantime, preheat your oven to 300 degrees. Once the shells have hardened, bake the macarons for 15-20 minutes.
7. Allow the macarons to cool a bit (until the pan is warm) before removing the macarons. If your macarons are stuck to the pan, pour a couple of drops of water under your Silpat or parchment. This should help the macarons lift off the pan more easily, due to the moisture. However, don’t let the macarons sit with the water for too long or you’ll risk the macarons becoming soggy.  
8. Once the macarons are fully cooled, spread some of the caramel sauce on the bottom of each of your macarons, add chopped pecans on top of the caramel on one of the macarons and sandwich the two macarons together. If you want to be super fun, brush some pearl dust on the top of the macarons.

Just a small side note….Did you win the Butterball giveaway? You have to email me to claim your prize and you have until tonight! Neither of the winners have emailed me. You want free turkeys, don’t you?

EDITED:

Since the original winners never emailed me, I had to re-draw for the Turkey gift cards!

cara….who said:

I try to get as much done as I can the night before and we rent an extra fridge!

AND

Kayla…who said:

My tip is to make your SIL host so you can just show up with your pecan pie and call it a day.  

For the two of you who won, to redeem your prize, please email me within 48 hours at niftyfoodie@gmail.com! Congratulations!

—————————————————————————–

I absolutely cannot believe that Thanksgiving is this week. It feels like a few weeks ago, I was sweating like crazy any time I stepped outside. Oh wait…that weather is still going on here.

Maybe that’s why I can’t believe it. Ah, life in the South. Turkey Day in 80 degrees is the norm around here. To get myself in the mood, I usually start baking up a storm.

I made these little guys two years ago to get myself in the mood for Thanksgiving. I’d love to make them again, but only two were eaten. Why? Well, because they were “too pretty to eat”. ::sigh::

Read the rest of this entry »