Christmas Baking

You know I am always looking for a reason to bake.  There is no better reason than to share treats with friends and family.  It’s my way of saying I love you.  Here’s a round up of what I made this year.  I’ll link to recipes for you if there is a link.

I made this Eggnog Banana Bread with an Eggnog Glaze because I had bananas I needed to use and eggnog I needed to use.  No recipe link here.  I just used my grandma’s basic banana bread and swapped out eggnog for the milk.  Then I thought it could use a little more eggnoginess so I made a glaze with eggnog and powered sugar.

Next, I made these Cinnamon Sugar Pretzels.  I wanted a little more cinnamony sugary deliciousness so I made 1 and a half of the vegetable oil coating.  They were really good but didn’t have the wow factor I was looking for.  I had white chocolate in the cupboard and it seemed like the perfect addition.  It was!

I only made this one cookie.  It was supposed to be a really cute red and white spiral cookie.  But I thought that I would take a short cut and use a sugar cookie mix.  Wrong!  It turned out more like a red and white tie dye cookie.  Oh well!  I rolled them in pretty sprinkles and they turned out okay. 

One of my favorites this year were these Peppermint Stars.  Oh man!  I took this tray to work and people were talking about them the next day.  They said they were like a York peppermint patty only 100 times better.  I used the smallest Christmasy cookie cutter I had. They could really be Peppermint anything. How about hearts for Valentine’s Day? 

These Saltine Cracker Toffees where my absolute favorite!  I may or may not have eaten this entire plate as soon as the picture was snapped.  It also may or may not be true that I ate them for breakfast… twice… once crumbled into a smoothie.  So addictive!  My apologies because these did not make it into the hands of any friends.