Holiday Baking Party

Making Christmas cookies is one of  my favorite things to do during the Holidays. To prepare for hours of baking I ran to Walmart to pick up all of the ingredients I needed. You can view the story of my trip below.

I bought ingredients to make: peanut butter hot cocoa,  sugar cookies, chocolate peanut butter fudge, haystacks, cake mix cookies, and oreo truffles. I also bought some things to keep the little children busy while we were baking.

To start the day off right I made peanut butter hot cocoa using a recipe I got off of the ConAgra Foods website.

Peanut Butter Hot Cocoa

Ingredients:

1 envelope of Swiss Miss cocoa mix

1 tablespoon of Peter Pan peanut butter

Hot water

Can of Reddi Wip

Directions:

1. Put cocoa mix and peanut butter in a mug.

2. Gradually stir hot water into the mix.

(My note: GRADUALLY. Do it to fast and the peanut butter will be chunky at the bottom)

3. Top with Reddi Wip

The peanut butter hot cocoa tasted so yummy. Be sure to add the hot water in GRADUALLY while you stir it. If you add the water in too quickly you will end up with chunks of peanut butter at the bottom- not that I would know anything about that!! :)

First, we made oreo truffles. These are my favorite and so easy!

Oreo Truffles

I used this recipe from Allrecipes.com. Walmart was out of Baker’s chocolate so I used almond bark instead and it worked great. My favorite part of this recipe was letting the children smash the cookies (though next time I would double the ziploc bags they were in).

After the oreo truffles we made haystack cookies, another simple recipe. There are many ways to make these but we used only two ingredients: chow mein noodles and butterscotch chips to make a sweet, crunchy treat.

Haystack Cookies

Ingredients:

Bag of butterscotch chips

2 cups of chow mein noodles

Directions:

1. Pour the butterscotch chips into a bowl and melt them (microwave 15-30 seconds at a time, stirring in between each one)

2. Add in chow mein noodles and stir until noodles are coated well

3. Form into piles or “haystacks”

4. Let cool in the fridge and enjoy :)

Next up was sugar cookies. I didn’t like the recipe we used so I’m looking for another one (have one to share?) The children did enjoy decorating and eating the cookies though.

 

I took a video of the boys decorating the cookies and eating them. You can find that video on YouTube here.

 

The last thing we made together was cake mix cookies. These tasted delicious but didn’t make as many cookies as I thought the mix would so I would double it next time I made it. Here is the recipe how we made it:

Cake Mix Cookies:

Ingredients:

1 box of cake mix

2 eggs

1/3 cup of Wesson vegetable oil

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2. Add cake mix, eggs, and oil together

3. Drop into balls on a greased cookie sheet (I use PAM)

4. Bake for 7-8 minutes

While we were making the cookies the children painted ornaments to give as gifts. They had fun but boy did they make a mess!

After 5 hours of baking, decorating and painting everyone left and I tried my hand at peanut butter chocolate fudge.It turned out ok but I wouldn’t make it again.

I also made myself a smoothie with my new Hamilton Beach blender. I love this blender! It has a stainless steel base and a glass jar. It also has “wave action” to ensure drinks with no ice chunks. I also love that it has a little pouring spout at the top to keep messes at a minimum! Here is a video of me making my smoothie (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c6d6utSr7A) so you guys can see the blender in action :)

(Disclosure: I was compensated by Collective Bias but all thoughts and opinions are my own.)