Recipe: Chocolate Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Bars

I'm a very bad blogger. It has been 2 months since my last post. Never fear, I'm perfectly fine. Obligations with family and our PTO swamped me this fall. Which means not only did I not blog, I didn't read. Which is a travesty I'm correcting.

What I did manage to do was find my new favorite treat to bring to events on the spur of the moment. I know this isn't new to many of you, but for me, these were a revelation.

I've made homemade Rice Krispie Bars for forever. It's not difficult, after all. And the store bought ones suck. Ew. I even knew about various additions or flavors, although I was too lazy or uninterested to try them. Then one day, my husband calls me. He drives across the country for a living, and I figured he'd found a new favorite regional food. He had. It was these. He sent me two links to two recipes, figuring one of them had to work. They sounded ok—peanut butter and chocolate nearly always work for me—but kind of mundane.

Oh. My. God. It's always the simplest things that blow you away with their glory, but these are truly the best things I've had in forever. They are chewy, crunchy, salty, sweet...They hit every one of the perfect snack requirements...and they take 10 minutes or less and produce a 13 x 9 pan of the little darlings.

In the last 2 months, I've made 4 pans of them. I've taken them to my aforementioned PTO meetings where they were devoured. I made them for Oldest to sell at a Family Movie Night event for Student Council.  They sold out before the movie even started. I dropped some off for a friend having a not-so-good day, and she thanked me for saving the crappiest day ever because THEY ARE THAT GOOD.

The only modifications I made to the recipe were peanut butter amounts and subbing in butter for margarine. Butter is always better.

The Great Christmas Tree Hunt

My town is in that valley in the distance.

The Christmas season is a mixed blessing when you live the middle of nowhere. You can't just pop down to the nearest Target to grab that last minute gift. (That's an 80 mile drive). So that means you're shopping online, hoping Amazon Prime sends whatever it was you forgot in the promised 2 days. But it also means that you aren't stuck paying upwards of $60 for dead or dying tree to stick in your house. We live adjacent to a National Forest, and our local area grocery stores, gas stations etc all stock Christmas Tree Permits. For a small fee, you can go cut your own. And that's what we did over Thanksgiving weekend.

Hump Day Movie: Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas Special

© Henstooth Video

For me, a child growing up in the 1980s, the Claymation Christmas Special made far more of an impact than the 1960s stop motion Rudolph and Frosty movies did. The Raisins and their friends were funny, they were unusual, and they were "modern."

Watching them today, the only thing that seems really dated to me is the sophistication of the claymation work. The California Raisins commercials were HUGE when I was little. Of course, I lived in California, but they made TOYS out of them. Those were some of the first toys *I* could ever remember being made from commercials. And they were raisins!  The Will Vinton Christmas Special took that stop-motion technique even further, using unusual characters to share a wide variety of carols.  The hosts are dinosaurs. The Carol of the Bells is done with goofy bells hitting themselves. It's silly, innocent, and still one of my favorite memories of the holidays as a child.

You can still find it on DVD, but I have yet to see this show in-store anywhere. Amazon has it for $20.

There are clips available on Youtube. I love We Three Kings . The shoes and mustaches on the camels kill me.

What's your favorite childhood holiday movie? Have you seen this one?

Recipe: Tri-Cornered Cream Cheese Cookies with Jam Filling

I'm sure it comes as no surprise that I have approximately a billion cookie cookbooks. This recipe is a variation found in the September 1994 Cookies Galore Pillsbury magazine. These are far more fussy than most of my usual cookies, since I'm more of a  drop cookie/bar cookie fan. But for Christmas, I make these for my husband who adores them. The dough can also be used for a sugar cookie dough that you can cut with cookie cutters. Baking times should be adjusted based on the size of the cookies.

Cream Cheese Cutout Cookies
1 cup sugar
1 cup butter, softened
1 (3oz) package cream cheese, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
2 1/2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
jam in various flavors: I use blackberry, seedless raspberry, and apricot
powdered sugar

In a large bowl, beat sugar, butter, and cream cheese until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and egg; blend well. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup; level off. Stir in flour and salt; mix well. Cover with plastic wrap; refrigerate 1 to 2 hours for easier handling. I refrigerate mine overnight. I also put any scraps BACK in the fridge before re-rolling, because this dough gets soft really quickly.

Heat oven to 375F. On lightly floured surface, roll half of dough at a time to 1/8" thickness; refrigerate remaining dough. Cut into 2 1/2" circles with cookie cutter. Place 1 inch apart on ungreased sheets. Spoon 1 teaspoon jam onto center of each round. Shape into triangles, folding 3 sides in without covering jam; pinch corners to seal.


Bake at 375 for 7-10 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheets. Dust with powdered sugar, if desired.


To make cutouts, follow the recipe above, omitting the jam and powdered sugar.  Cut with floured cutters. Bake similar sized cookies together, carefully watching the time. They tend to over bake quickly.  If your cookies have detailed designs, you might consider chilling the cutouts before baking.

Review: Holiday Kisses by Jaci Burton, Shannon Stacey, HelenKay Dimon, and Alison Kent

Format: ebook
Pub Date: December 5, 2011
Publisher: Carina Press
Length: 103,000 words
FTC: review copy courtesy of the publisher

I read this around Christmas time, but with all of the craziness going on, I didn't get the review up in a timely manner. But for those who read holiday books year round (like me) here's what I thought of the second Carina Press holiday anthology: overall, very good, although as is typical with anthos, there were some I liked more than others.

Happy Holidays! Oh wait...

It seems like Christmas merchandise creeps onto the shelves earlier and earlier every year. I've spotted Christmas crafts in July, and the holiday decorations are popping up in big boxes as soon as the back to school promos come down.

And with the holiday decor comes the holiday romances. Many of them with publication dates of September and October. Before Halloween! And there are a ton of them coming out this year. (See pictures and links below the break.)

I personally love holiday romances, but they do seem kind of risky for authors. Their sales season is fairly short (although there are some, like me, who read them all year long.) And so many of them center around Christmas, which means they risk alienating those who celebrate other winter holidays like Hanukkah or Kwanza.


What do you think of holiday romances? Do you love them, hate them, or just feel kind of meh? And are you like me, and read them all year long or do you only read them close to the holidays?

Recipe: Finnish Stars aka Prune Tarts aka Joulutortut

Those who live in the Great Lakes area and/or those of Finnish heritage will recognize this Christmas classic.

Prune tarts (yes, prunes) are traditional Yule Tarts. They start with a dough, cut into a pinwheel shape using either a knife and/or a pinwheel cutter. Then a prune (yes, prunes!) filling is placed in the center. The dough is then folded over into the traditional star shape.

This is a vintage recipe that came from the old, metal cutter. And I do mean vintage. The original cutter was purchased by my mom's family sometime in the early 60s. There is a plastic pinwheel cutter out there, but it isn't quite the same. Since the metal one is so hard to find, though, it will work.

I think even prune haters should try this recipe as-is. But you can, of course, substitute any THICK preserves for the filling.

This is a bit of a retro recipe, so it may look a little funky to modern bakers. ;)

Prune Tarts

Dough: 
4 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup butter
2/3 cup milk
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 eggs

Filling:

3/4 lb prunes
1 1/4 cups water
1/4 cup sugar

Mix butter into dry ingredients with pastry blender. In small bowl,  beat the eggs, milk and vanilla. Mix egg mixture into dry ingredients till a medium soft dough is formed. Set in a cool place for an hour.

Cook the prunes in water until soft. Remove the stones, and add the sugar. (Most prunes these days are already pitted). Beat to a paste.

Roll out dough to about 1/4 inch thick and cut with tart cutter (sharp knife or pinwheel cutter). Place a teaspoon of filling in the center, fold the strips over to the center and press together.

Place on a cookie sheet and bake in the over for 20 minutes or until golden brown at a temperature of 400 degrees.

Makes about 4 dozen tarts.

Recipe: Big Soft Ginger Cookies

My Aunt Cindy won second place in the California State Fair with this recipe.  I have made them every year for Christmas for the past 15 years and counting. She's no longer with us, but I think of her every Christmas when I dig this recipe out of my file box. And my family and friends ask me when I'll be be baking these for the cookie trays every year.  I even use them as bribery material for my brother-in-law when I need him to do me a favor ;)

Note: This recipe has been adjusted for baking at 3500 feet in elevation. If you live above or below that, you may need to adjust the baking time, temperature and/or molasses amount to get the soft texture that makes these so great.

Big Soft Ginger Cookies
1/4 cup molasses*
2 1/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup margarine, butter, or shortening**
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons sugar

*We use a mild molasses

**This is the only cookie recipe where I use butter flavored shortening instead of butter. For some reason, at my altitude, it works better here.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
2. Combine flour, ginger, soda, cinnamon, cloves, and salt; set aside
3. In large mixing bowl, beat shortening for 30 seconds on low speed to soften. Gradually add 1 cup of sugar; beat until fluffy. Add egg and molasses; beat well.
4. Stir dry ingredients into beaten mixture.
5. Shape into 1 1/2 inch balls. Roll in the 2 tablespoons sugar (placed in shallow bowl or rimmed plate) and place on ungreased cookie sheet about 2 1/2 inches apart.
6. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-9 minutes or until light brown and still puffed. Do Not Overbake!
7. Let stand 2 minutes before transferring to wire rack. Cool.

Makes 24 3-inch cookies.