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Merry Day Before Christmas Eve!

12/23/2016

I know we have been a little absent lately. It is difficult to sit down and blog when family is home and I am trying to enjoy every minute with these guys!

But, the cooking and the holiday activities continue. I woke up early this morning to put the finishing touches on Cocoa Bombs for Christmas Eve. I made the chocolates pictured above yesterday. If you want the recipe for those, I made them last Easter and posted the recipe here.

I received an early Christmas gift from my son and daughter-in-law! It is the Cocoa Grande to heat the milk for Hot Cocoa Bombs! (or you can make regular hot cocoa in it) They gave it to me early so that we can use it on Christmas Eve. I am so excited. It makes the milk foamy, too, so the cocoa seems extra special.

You can order one here, while it is still cold outside.

Since we will be drinking Hot Cocoa, and Hot Orange Punch, Cookies are in order. When I saw this idea on Domestically Speaking, I fell in love with it and decided that I had to try it for our family party. I am going to use my favorite sugar cookie recipe. I already have the dough chilling in the fridge while I am writing this post. She used a delicious looking frosting to stick on her candy canes. I am going to use Wilton Candy Melts for mine because they harden so quickly. I also found the idea done on foodfolksandfun. They baked their own cookies instead of using store cookies and she gives an icing recipe. They had some cute pics as well.

Check out Facebook later, and I will put up pictures of how our sugar cookies turned out. Here is the recipe for sugar cookies that I always use. It makes a good, tasty rolled cookie.

Keren's Sugar Cookies

Life is good! We feel so very blessed this year and we are filled with gratitude. Another blessing happened yesterday, my teenage son found a job! He has been looking for a while, so this was a great gift. I won't be posting again until after Christmas, so I hope that you all have joy, love and happiness in your lives this year and always. Remember to continue to #LIGHTtheWORLD, as many have done throughout December this year. The theme for today is to be a peacemake as Jesus was-how appropriate for what can be a stressful time of year for many. Tomorrow, the Christmas Eve theme is Jesus Cared for his Loved Ones, and so can You. How perfect when family and friends will be gathered.
Merry Christmas to you all from 3 Winks! See you in a frew days!

Dipped Chocolates

PieCupcakens

Orange Bread in a cozy

Fudge Mounds

Florida Fudge

Cinnamon Cocoa Bombs

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How to Make a PieCupcaken

12/20/2016

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This post contains affiliate links. I will be compensated for purchases through those links, but they will be no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support.

The other day I was watching a local morning show. They had a chef from the Four Seasons Restaurant on the show doing a segment about the PieCaken, the dessert answer to the Turducken. It was an amazing thing. If you can't decide if you want to eat a piece of cake or a piece of pie, you can have a PieCaken. He quickly showed how he made it and I thought, "I have to try this!". But, I had a
few roadblocks because, for one thing, the end result was so huge! When the chef made it , he used pecan pie and pumpkin pie in a spice layer and a maple layer of cake. It looked so cool when he sliced it, but it also looked like a lot to eat. I didn't think a pie would fit into my regular 9" round cake pans either.

I researched around the internet a bit to see who else was making this thing. One media commentator said that this dessert had been around for quite a while in the dessert underground. I didn't even know that there was a dessert underground! So I was talking to Alicia about my desire to make one and blog about it and also my dilemmas and she suggested that I turn it into a cupcake version! Genius! (Then I saw today that it had been done before, but I still think my daughter is a genius!) We decided that we would try to make it a little lighter and use angel food cake with a cherry pie filling.
Here is how we made our version of the Piecupcaken:

First I used my mom's Pie Crust Recipe and a 2 inch bisquit cutter to fill my mini muffin tins with crust. Bake them at 400 degrees F. for 15 min.
Meanwhile, mix up an angel food cake mix.

Cool the shells briefly when they come out of the oven and then fill them with cherry pie filling. Put cupcake liners in a regular sized muffin tin and put a ladle full of cake batter in the bottom. Then, set the filled pie shell in the middle of the batter. Top the little pie with more cake batter.
Bake in a 350 degree oven for 25 min. I tried this for 20 min, but the fluff of the cake didn't hold up as well as at 25, even though the cake batter did cook all of the way through at both tries.

When it comes out of the oven it looks like a regular cupcake. We were worried that the angel food batter would be too fluffy to hold up, but it was fine! You can see the pie peeking through a little bit, but there was no sogginess on the bottom or anywhere.

We frosted them with a light and fluffy Marshmallow Cream Frosting. We found the recipe for it on Kraft. Add a few sprinkles and there you have it! A Piecupcaken! A pretty, delicious and original Christmas dessert!

One of the benefits of this pie, cake mash-up is that the crust does allow you to have a fruity center of the cake, without it getting soggy and the fruit sinking to the bottom of the cake.
While we worked on this we came up with some other flavor combinations to try:

Cherry Pie-Chocolate Cake to make a Black Forest type PIecupcaken.
My husband says Pecan Pie and German Chocolate!
Cherry or Strawberry Pie with Lemon Cake.
Apple Pie with Spice Cake.
Peach Pie with Yellow Cake or Spice Cake

So many possibilities! Let me know what combinations you come up with!

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Christmas Eve Traditions, Soup and Stockings

12/19/2016

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**This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. But, all opinions expressed are my own.

Here it is! The last week before Christmas. That last stretch before the big day. Have you gotten everything ready so that you can spend this last week relaxing and enjoying the time with your family or do you still have things to finish up? Is everything in place for your Christmas Eve traditions? What does your family do on Christmas Eve?
Because we eat a big meal on Christmas Day, we always keep our Christmas Eve dinner simple. It consists of two kinds of soup served with crackers and other soup toppings. Here are the two recipes we serve:

Clam Chowder

Taco Soup

We also like to drink Egg Nog, Hot Cocoa Bombs or Hot Orange Punch with our homemade cookies. We usually play games, we may watch a Christmas movie and we always end with singing to the tree.

My grandson Adrian is here! He is so excited about everything this year. Isn't he adorable?

Do you do Christmas stockings with your kids? I know families who do not, but they are a big part of our Christmas. We don't have a fireplace, so our children always would lay out their stockings along the back of the couch. When Santa would fill them, he would lay them on each person's bed. In the wee hours of the morning, when the children woke up, they were not allowed to go to the tree without us. But, they could get into their stockings. They would wake each other up and giggle and whisper about what was in them. Sometimes, they would even fall back to sleep for a little while. This gave Mom and Dad a little extra time to sleep, until the kids couldn't stand it anymore and woke us up.
If you haven't tried stockings for your family but would like to, yet you don't want to fight the last minute shopping crowds, there are still 2 days left to get your orders by Christmas from Oriental Trading. They have some cute, inexpensive choices and you will be able to afford to get one for everyone!

If you have a little time to sew,Sew Like My Mom has a really good tutorial to help you make some special stockings for your family. Or, if you are fast at crocheting, here are some darling ones on ravelry.
I know in some places they use pillowcases instead of stockings. Whatever you use, Christmas stockings are a lot of fun. Do you have any special memories associated with using them? Please fill free to share them with us! Keep having a Merry Week!

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Orange Poppy seed Bread and Loaf Cozy

12/16/2016

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I am super late posting because I had to go to the post office and mail all of my out of state gifts. You don't even want to know how much that cost! But, I love making and giving gifts and getting them all mailed is a big relief to me. Now I can focus on the things I need to finish up at home.
Do you ever realize that just when you thought you had everyone covered, there is a friend or a neighber that you really want to do something for? Here is a sweet way to remember someone that is tasty, warm, personal and useful that doesn't break the bank, but adds that extra touch that says you gave some thought to your gift. It is a bread cozy for a loaf of your special bread. The great thing about this cozy is that you can use any scraps of fabric that you may have. You can make a few in advance to have ready for when your bread is baked and your friend can use it again to keep bread warm when she takes her own bread to share at a family or church function. (Or wherever)

I found the original idea in this book. It has tons of great Christmas gift and recipe ideas. The original directions were for a tiny loaf, but you can adapt it for any sized loaf. You can still order this book on Amazon.

For the Cozy: You need about 1/3 of a yard of any cotton fabric and the same amount of batting and about 1 yard of ribbon.

Measure your bread pan on the outside from rim end to rim end and the sides from rim end to rim end, both going under the pan and back up the other side. Add one inch to the measurements.
Cut 2 pieces of fabric and one piece of batting according to the measurements. I cut mine 12" x 16" . In retrospect, I could have gone a little smaller.
Place fabric right sides together on top of the batting. Leaving an opening for turnig on one end, stitch all the way around using a 1/2" seam. Trim the seams and corners and flip right side out.
Press, then stitch the opening shut. You can stitich by hand or on the machine and top stitch all around.
Place your bread pan in the center of the rectangle and pinch up the cornors like this:

Well, I don't have the pan in it here, but I pinned it at each corner like this.

Tie 4 bows and tack them at each pinned corner, stitching the corners together at the same time. It should end up looking like this:

Now, are you wondering about that loaf of bread?
Citrus is getting ripe and so prolific right now that this is a great time of year to bake an Orange Poppy seed Loaf. It is super quick and simple to whip up and the orange glaze makes it extra special. Do you have lemons instead of oranges? It works for lemons just as well. Here is the recipe:

Orange Poppy seed Bread

When I put the bread in the cozy, I lined the cozy with some waxed paper or parchment paper.

Since I was giving this loaf away, I decided to put the glaze in a little container so it wouldn't be too messy and they can add the glaze on their own. Have you seen these cute little containers at Dollar Tree? I use them for so many things and you can fit just the right amount of glaze in one for this loaf. I used a round self-adhesive label on the top. (I just drew on it myself).

Cute and tasty, right? I would love a gift like this, so I am sure others would as well.

Now, here is how the loaf looks when you put on the glaze and serve it.

Put it on your cute Christmas serving plate and pour on the glaze.

Yum!

Look at the poppy seeds and the bits of orange zest. What a great combination.

There you have it! It took me much longer to wite this post about this little gift than it took me to make it. You can make the cozy for any special loaf you make and you will have an extra special gift for someone! I hope you enjoy it!

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Creators of Hot Cocoa Bombs! (copyrighted)

Author

Helen Reynolds: Mother of six children , grandmother to ten and counting! I love to cook, craft and create things and I especially love doing that with my family, So, when my lawyer daughter, Lindsey, my artist daughter, Madalynn, and I came up with the idea of Hot Cocoa Bombs, this blog was born. Then, one more daughter, with her technical and science skills, plus creativity has joined in to round us out! Read more about us here!

Click this link and visit 3WinksDesignShop on Etsy. Find our Hot Cocoa Bomb Idea Book, our For the Love of PIe e-book and more of our creations!

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Merry Day Before Christmas Eve!

How to Make a PieCupcaken

Christmas Eve Traditions, Soup and Stockings

Orange Poppy seed Bread and Loaf Cozy

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