Holiday Cookies

This post brought to you by Walmart. All opinions are 100% mine.
Making Holiday Cookies with my daughter has become a tradition in our house.  The best part about cookie making for us is not eating them, but we love to decorate them and give them out.  The smell of holiday cookies in our house really sets the stage for the wonderful holiday season ahead.
Did you know that Walmart on their website links inspire and assist with the holiday baking and entertaining? The site includes fun festive cookie recipes, coffee preparation tips, and great deals on the brands you need for your best baking. To help prepare for holiday entertaining and gifting there are even how-to videos to guide you through the holidays with ease. Also, Walmart carries trusted, quality brands such as Smucker’s®, Jif®, Pillsbury®, Eagle Brand®, Crisco®, Hungry Jack® and Folgers® so you know you are using the best ingredients. Whether you are creating a traditional favorite cookie, or trying something brand new, this site has helpful tips for you.
This year we made gingerbread cookies.  My daughters were so excited about this.  They were so excited to decorate the gingerbread men and put faces on them.  They aren't the prettiest cookies, but I the people we give them to know that they were made with love.

DIY Candy Flowers

I love crafting with candy.  Candy is so colorful and versatile and best of all tasty!  The folks over at CandyGalaxy asked me to create a craft using candy.  I was up for the challenge.  They have such a huge assortment of candy on their website.  Where was this site when I was getting married and creating a candy buffet?  You can choose candy by color!  I love the candy letters, the possibilities are endless with them.  You can spell our your name, your husbands name, thank you, or they would be great as cake toppers (because its so much easier than fondant).  

I wanted to make something simple with candy that could be used for multiple occasions so I made flowers with lemon gummies and Jelly Belly Raspberries.  These flowers could be used as table decoration, party favors, or cupcake toppers.

 Lemon gummies and Jelly Belly Raspberries

Using a sharp scissor cut one edge of the lemon gummy.

Trim the other end to form a point.

Snip off the point.

Repeat for 4 additional petals.  Place on baking sheet lined with a silicone pad and bake for 3 min at 250 degrees.  This will help them stick together.

Wait for flowers to cool and transfer them onto a mini cupcake liner.

Add a Jelly Belly Raspberry to the center.

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of CandyGalaxy. All opinions are 100% mine.

How to Make Citrus Salt

I've been trying to eat fish at least once a week now. Making citrus salt is so easy and so great to sprinkle on top of seafood.  All you need is two ingredients Salt (Sea or Kosher) and Citrus Zest (Lemon, Lime or Orange).    Combine salt and zest about 2 tablespoon of zest to half a cup of salt.  Place on baking sheet and bake for 250 degrees Fahrenheit for about 1.5 hours or until zest is dry.

Divide salt into air tight glass containers.  I love giving this homemade citrus salt out in small cooking gift baskets along with other kitchen essentials.

Salt and zest, you could you a combination of zest or just one. 

This is how it looks after its dry.

Homemade citrus salt (with ombre polymer clay tag - tutorial coming)

Thai Fried Garlic (Gratium Jiew) Recipe and a DIY Mason Jar Spout

When I eat at my parents house, my mother always brings out a small jar of fried garlic.  These little morsels of heaven have a very distinct garlic flavor (more mellow than raw garlic, but more bite than roasted garlic).  They also add a nice crunch to "kao thom" (a thai rice porridge), noodle soup or Hainan chicken.  I asked my mom for the recipe to share with you.

There are two versions of this recipe.  The images below show the dry version where the oil is strained out.  You can use the strained oil as garlic oil for cooking.

Ingredients:
1 head of garlic pealed and minced
1/4 cups oil (canola or vegetable)

Place both garlic and oil into a medium sized saute pan or wok (do not preheat).  Turn on heat to high and stir garlic and oil. Continue stirring for a one to two of minutes or until garlic starts to turn very light tan.  Once garlic is medium color, turn off the heat.  Keep stirring the garlic in the pan.  The residual heat will continue to cook the garlic to a nice golden brown  You do not want to burn the garlic or else it will be bitter.  Once garlic is golden brown remove from pan and put though a fine mesh metal strainer.  Catch the oil in a container and use as garlic oil.  Let garlic sit in strainer for 15 minutes so oil is mostly drained out.  Transfer garlic into jar and place both oil and garlic into refrigerator or you can use immediately.

Fried garlic in a mason jar (with pour spout from salt container).  You could also add some dried peppers into the mix if you like spicy.

Mince garlic and add to oil.  I know it seems like a lot of oil, but you will strain it out to make garlic oil.

Once garlic is medium brown turn off heat and keep stirring.  Do not burn the garlic.

Yum..

To create a pour spout for your mason jar cut out the top of a salt carton.  Cut to size of mason jar top.

Morton Salt top placed on top of mason jar for easy pouring.

I took apart the spout with pliers and glued piece of wrapping paper on top.

Finished product.  Perfect to give as a gift or keep for yourself.

The Jolly Ranchers, The Tootsie Roll, The Cheese Thief and the Metamorphosis

Jolly Ranchers, Tootsie Rolls and Me.

What do these three things have in common?

They are always the last picked.  When I was in grade school, I wasn't athletic or popular, which is two strikes when picking teams in gym. More often than not I was one of the last picked, always a difficult decision between me and the boy who wet in his pants because he was so nervous for a the spelling bee. At least I won out to "Pee Pee Paul".. most of the time.

It is almost two weeks after Halloween.  Look in your candy bucket, what's left?  In our family it's always Jolly Ranchers and Tootsie Rolls.  At work, when my teammates bring in leftover Halloween candy, the bag is always brimming with Jolly Ranchers and Tootsies Rolls.  Even if they bring in other candy, the chocolate always goes first, then the Skittles and Starbursts, then the other non-candy like pretzels, but the poor Jolly Rancher and Tootse Rolls are left at the bottom of the tattered ziploc bag.

I am here to bring new life into these candy outcasts, you could call it "candy up-cycling."  Gather up the Jolly Rancher and Tootsie Rolls and prepare for the metamorphosis.  By simply melting Jolly Ranchers you can create the butterfly candy seen below.

First we make the wing molds out of an old soda can.

It looks as though I'm going to make stars out of a Pepsi Can!  But I'm not, just making butterfly wing molds.
Cut soda can open and cut into half inch by six inch strips.  Then mark the strips as follows with a  marker at the following lenghts:
.25 inches, 1.5 inches, 2.75 inches, 5.4 inches.  These will be the marks where you fold.
You want to make an even number of strips, as butterflies have two wings.

1. Line up ends of strips and fold over twice (this should secure the can together).
2. Notice that the can now stays together wthout holding.  Do this for all the strips.
3. Find the second marking that is 1.5 inches.
4. Fold over to make a "D" shape
5. Find the third marking (2.75 inches) and fold over slightly
6. Find the fourth marking and fold inwards.  So it looks like a "B".  This is the mold for the butterfly wings.  You can tweak the aluminum as you please to make it less pointy.  I pushed it to make it more curvy on the bottom.

Next step is making the crushing the candy

1. Put jolly rancher onto a piece of parchment paper.
2. Create a packet by sealing all sides.  (This is important, or else your kitchen will be a mess!  Trust me I know.)
3.  Take a pan and bang at the candy a couple of times.
Put something underneath before you smash the candy, as you do not want to damage your counter tops.
4. Candy should come out in small pieces.
5. Spray a little non stick cooking spray on molds. Place the molds on a baking dish lined with parchment paper. Fill the molds.  Try not to leave any open spots.
6. Preheat oven to 295 degrees Fahrenheit  and place in oven for 5 minutes or until candy is melted.
Take candy out of oven once it is melted, as always when working with sugar it is very hot!  So be careful.
If some areas of the butterfly wings were not filled in because there was too little sugar you have two options.  One is to take a toothpick and move the sugar into the spot (if area is small enough, and you work fast).  The other is to wait for candy to cool silghtly,  add more candy and place back in oven for another five minutes or until candy melts.  You want to make sure you do not overheat the candy because it will turn yellow to brown.

Sugar will cool fairly quickly.  So once its warm to the touch you can take out the folded ends and release the wings.
  The wings will become more brittle as it cools.
If you break the wings, you can piece it back together on the baking sheet and reheat in the oven for a couple of minutes.

Unmolded jolly rancher butter fly wings.

Fruit Tart Attempt Numero Dos

Fruit Tart using Smitten Kitchens' Unshrinkable Crust recipe and Ina Garten's Pastry Cream recipe. The pastry cream recipe is easy to make and to die for! You could used store bought pie crust and the pastry cream recipe with some fresh strawberries, so yummy.  One alteration I did make on the Pastry Cream recipe is to add a bit more milk or a little less corn startch so the cream isn't as thick. This was my second attempt at a crust and it wasn't half bad. I the tart dough is a little hard to work with because its so crumbly, using alot of saran wrap helped.