Christmas Treats

[KT0930]

I've been baking all weekend and it got me curious. What's your favorite "guilty pleasure" (for eating, Goofynina!!) at Christmas? Mine is homemade turtle bars: pecans, homemade caramel sauce and melted chocolate, spread on a brown sugar, flour and butter crust. YUMMY!

[oswald]

for me it's always been christmas cookies.  chocolate chips, oatmeal, sugar cookies have always been the favorites, but actually any kind of cookie.   hmmmm cookies.   

[jbeany]

Homemade cinnamon rolls, chocolate fudge and Louisiana Cream Fudge.  Oink, oink, oink.  All right, where's my cook book!

[boxman55]

for me it's always been Christmas cookies.  chocolate chips, oatmeal, sugar cookies have always been the favorites, but actually any kind of cookie.   hmmmm cookies.   

My favorite are those cookies with the chocolate kiss in the middle don't know what you call them but they are awesome. Need to find someone to make them for me...Boxman

[goofynina]

Lately i havent had a thing for cookies, weird huh?  BUT, i do have a guilty pleasure and it is..............cool whip  and........................jello  , HA, thought i was going to tell you what i did with whip cream huh?  oops, damn, there goes that one track mind again , anyways,  yep, i likes me cool whip and jello (in moderation) and me loves some carrot cake. 

[Sluff]

I love the cream cheese frosting on carrot cake. 

[thegrammalady]

I love the cream cheese frosting on carrot cake. 

is there any other way to eat carrot cake??

[KT0930]

I love the cream cheese frosting on carrot cake. 

is there any other way to eat carrot cake??

Absolutely not!

[Wattle]

I've been baking all weekend and it got me curious. What's your favorite "guilty pleasure" (for eating, Goofynina!!) at Christmas? Mine is homemade turtle bars: pecans, homemade caramel sauce and melted chocolate, spread on a brown sugar, flour and butter crust. YUMMY!

KT, Can you share the recipe?

[twirl]

I love shrimp potato salad
and
chili con queso
and
avocado dip
and
bean chalupas
everyone else can have all the sweets I have to make

[kitkatz]

Those no cook chocolate cookies with coconut and walnuts in them. Mama used to make them every Christmas.

[pelagia]

When I was a girl my parents always put a little package of marzipan candies in my stocking.   I think it was one of the relatively rare connections with my German/Swiss family heritage. My husband sometimes brings me the really good kind when he travels to Germany.  These are little bars covered with chocolate and all I can say is "yum!" 

Since I married, one of our family traditions during the holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas) is to drink hot apple cider with spices (cinnamon, cloves, allspice, orange peel).  We put it on the wood stove and it makes the entire house smell wonderful.

I love to cook during the holidays.  We don't have a "traditional" Christmas meal.  It's the one time of the year that we sit down and decide on something special that we all feel like eating.  Some years I have made roast beef with Yorkshire Pudding (my mom made this for the occasional Sunday dinner when I was a girl).  One year I made all seafood.  Good thing, too, because it was the year the power was out for 5 days beginning on Christmas day.  I was able to cook because we have a gas stove.  One year we splurged and had lobsters.  Not a good memory though because I came down with the flu that night and was sick for days.  What a waste of a lobster meal. 

Our most special Christmas was in 2004.  On December 23, 2004 we had running water in our kitchen for the first time since September 2003.  That was how long it took to get a kitchen installed after the flooding of our house by Hurricane Isabel.   After the plumber left, I realized that, yes, I would be able to cook a meal.  My son was begging me to make turkey and my mom's version of stuffing, which he loves, and which he had not had since 2002 because of two disrupted Thanksgivings in a row.  I went to the store and there were no turkeys to be had except very giant frozen ones.  That was more stress than I needed and I opted for chicken instead.  So, our best Christmas dinner ever was a roast chicken and stuffing made according to my mom's recipe.   

We've had the occasional holiday party in December, but I wore myself out one year when we had an open house and 80 people showed up.  That event inspired my husband to write a tune called "Little Martha Stewart," which some might think is flattering (it was written before Martha went to jail...).  But, actually it's a fast and crazy sounding tune, with sections that sound a little maniacal, so I think of it as a reminder that I should never have an open house again.  These days I am most content during the holiday break to spend time with Stephen, Will and my mother-in-law (who I dearly love) playing Scrabble.

[monrein]

Pelagia, that is just uncanny.  Marzipan is my favorite treat ever.  As a kid my Mum used to make it from scratch since we couldn't buy it in Jamaica, and she made it to look like little potatoes.  I found that weird but apparently they do in Germany too.  Sometimes she'd get a gift of Marzipan from overseas and she'd save it for herself but occasionally we'd get a small taste.  Our first Christmas together, Lee gave me 2 boxes of really nice marzipan fruits and I ate both boxes over about three hours.  So sick was I. ugghh.  It's my favorite candy and unfortunately, verboten on the renal diet.

Also, I love scrabble.  My friend Tony and I play it quite a bit at the cottage.  Lee doesn't like games so I'm always looking for scrabble mates.

My mother-in-law makes my favorite shortbread cookies.  I've never had better and even when  use her recipe, mine aren't as good.