Baking for Christmas

The socks were awesome ;-) but there were more things to be grateful for! I did not get my baking day with the girls, but we got our "baking moments". Brianna has this thing she says often "Fudge Monkeys!". Someone asked her what a fudge monkey was... So we just had to make some. I didn't think it would be that hard to find a monkey shaped cookie cutter. I was wrong! Couldn't even find one online that looked nice. But the idea was planted in her head so we got creative (or is that crazy?) and found a monkey coloring page, shrunk it down to size, and cut out by hand about 10 monkey heads and then "drew" the face on them. Now if we had an actual cutter people might've gotten more then one, but one it was!!!



Then... we decided to make Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheel cookies. Made the sugar cookie recipe and got it in the fridge just like the recipe said. About an hour later I got to thinking about the chocolate layer and the peppermint layer & wondering how the flavors where suppose to get in there. Well, the recipes were kind of 2 different recipes in one. One for sugar cookies and one for the pinwheel cookies from the sugar cookie dough. After dividing the dough in two, you are suppose to mix in the ingredients for the flavors BEFORE you put it in the fridge. So - lesson learned - read the recipe all the way through before making it!!! Well, we pulled the dough out of the fridge, let it sit on the counter for a bit so it wasn't quite so hard and then, very messy job that it was, worked in melted chocolate into one half (my job) and an egg yolk and peppermint extract in the other (Brianna's job). Then we rolled the dough out & together & then into the fridge again... Finally getting them sliced and baked! Turned out pretty good (tasty too) for all our troubles.


And then we had to bring a "Tiffani creation" to Christmas dinner. She chose to make the "string of lights" cupcakes. Once again we had to improvise from the directions given in the book. The cord on the light was suppose to be green (with green shoestring licorice) but we could only find the red pull apart twizzlers at Winco so we had a red strand of lights. Then to make the light bulb shape you are suppose to cut the shape out of a graham cracker! What!? Ok, I gave it a try & got 1 good one out of 6 tries. That wasn't going to happen. So I made another batch of sugar cookies (my own favorite recipe this time), did some more trimming by hand and we had our light bulb shape for the top of the cupcake. (Closest cookie cutter I had to a light bulb was an ice cream cone. We trimmed off the "ice cream" dripping over the side & made the cone not quite so pointed.) Then instead of buying the colored decorating sugars, we colored our own sugar.

Here's the attempted trimming of the graham cracker...

Here's the cake portion of the light bulb completed - with the sugar cookie. Oh we also modified that part a bit... according to the book you put the cracker/cookie right on the cupcake and then mound lots of frosting to make the bulb. Les had the idea to cut the tops off the cupcake to make it level to set the cookie on and then put the top of the cake on the cookie and then just frosted it that way. Awesome idea & worked quite well. :) Although at this point the cupcakes were looking more like duck heads or something!!!

Frosting the cupcakes and then rolling 'em in the colored sugar to get our colored light bulbs.

Lights all done. The "electrical cord" in the background. The pretzels were stuck into the cupcake to hold the cord in place.

The string of lights. Thankfully, Les had a board that fit all the cupcakes because my large platter wasn't big enough. And doubly thankful that it just fit in the back of the trailblazer!!

The plug in... a large gum drop and 2 pieces of eclipse gum. :)

One last thing... We brought out a fudge monkey, pinwheel cookies and a whisk for everyone at Christmas dinner. (Except Grandma J & Grandpa Ron got an individual cake mix in a mug because the store was one whisk short when we went to buy them. So we had to come up with another idea and then pick who got it instead of the whisk. Not sure how the decision was made but I think Grandma J & Grandpa Ron got the better end of the deal - because personally, even though the whisk idea is super cute, that chocolate cake in a mug recipe is super yummy! So moist & no frosting needed.)