Oreo Truffles

Made Oreo truffles (aka Oreo balls) for Christmas Eve's Eve.  I had never made these before but had tried them when one of the interns in my office brought them during the summer.  OMG are these good!  I don't even want to think about the calorie count!  It's so difficult to just eat one or two or three!

I followed this recipe at Better Homes & Gardens, but the same recipe is available at many different websites. 

The recipe yielded 36 balls for me, I guess I made them a little bigger than one inch. I added red sprinkles and put them on a green dish.  They were a hit with the familia.  These were so good, I'd love to make them for different holidays with fun sprinkles. 

Another good, easy recipe to add to my file.  Try them, you will love them too!

Pretty Halloween Cookies

My friend Rhonda (mentioned here) hosted a Halloween Party for her little girl. She had a incredible food spread, everything was delicious and lovely. My favorite thing was her cookies. Don't these look picture perfect? Mine never look that good!

Thank you Rhonda for inviting us. Happy Halloween everybody!

Andes Chocolate Chunk Cookies

We've been so busy lately and I haven't had much time to bake like I usually do this time of the year. Needless to say, I am playing catch up. I am a big fan of chocolate mint so this afternoon Micaela and I experimented by making some cookies using the Andes Mint chips. I've had this bag for a while and everytime I opened the pantry, they were screaming "bake me, try me".

Micaela is always happy to "help me" in the kitchen, here she is proudly holding a sheet full of cookies before we put them in the oven.

I am happy to report, these cookies got a thumbs up from the whole family. Micaela even let Maxi sample them.

The recipe can be found on the package, here it is for your reference.

Andes Chocolate Chunk Cookies

2 sticks of butter or margarine

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

2 1/4 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups Andes Baking Chips

Beat butter, sugars, egg and vanilla in bowl with mixer. Mix in flour, baking soda and salt. Stir in Andes Baking Chips. Drop by spoonful, 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes-- til golden brown. Makes 5-6 dozen.

I hope you will take time out of your schedule to try these! Enjoy and thanks for stopping by!

More Holiday Cookies...

A couple of weeks ago I received my Kraft Foods Food & Family magazine in the mail. After finally getting a chance to read it, I marked about 10 recipes to try. Last week when I had a little time, I decided to make the Mint Thins found on page 6.

Basically it's Ritz crackers dipped in mint chocolate and sprinkled with crushed peppermint candy. The simplicity of the recipe really captured my attention. I thought well, "if these taste like the Girl Scout Thin Mints, I could have Thin Mints year round" so I decided to try them out.

Makes: 3 doz.

1 pkg. (8 squares) BAKER'S Semi-Sweet Baking Chocolate
1/4 tsp. peppermint extract
1 sleeve RITZ Crackers (36 crackers)
1 peppermint candy cane (6 inch), crushed

MICROWAVE chocolate in small microwaveable bowl as directed on package. Stir until completely melted. Blend in extract.

DIP crackers in melted chocolate, completely coating crackers with chocolate. Carefully scrape off excess chocolate. Place on waxed paper-covered baking sheets; sprinkle with crushed candy.

REFRIGERATE 30 min. or until chocolate is firm.

Very simple!

Well these are pretty good but a little more time consuming than I expected. Getting the chocolate to "perfectly" cover the cracker is something I still need to perfect. When I started I had my handy little assistant Micaela helping but I quickly figured out that melted chocolate and two year olds don't mix. As you can see, mine don't look as perfect as the ones in the magazine but they did taste pretty good. I recommend crushing your peppermints in a food processor. (I used my KitchenAid Food Processor). Although the large chunks of peppermint look good on the chocolate covered cracker (see Kraft's picture), I think it's more pleasant in your mouth without the chunks--- just MHO.

After I made the chocolate batch I decided to try some with White Chocolate. I was trying to create a swirled effect with red food coloring but I got carried away swirling and ended up with pink chocolate! In the end, the pink chocolate mint thins were preferred by my in house food critique (AKA hubby).

I hope you will take the time to try these.

You can subscribe to the Kraft Food & Family magazine by clicking here.

You can access all of the recipes found in the Holiday 2007 issue by clicking here.

Thanks for stopping by, happy baking or 'dipping'!

3-D Halloween Cookies

As I mentioned before,
I've been making
the rounds with all our trade partners.
You know, this is dangerous work because every store I walk into, I want to buy something. This past week I visited several Williams Sonoma stores. All the stores had these fabulous displays showcasing their new line of 3-D cookie cutters. These are so darn cute!

The 8 pieces come in this adorable Haunted House shaped box. Included are a pumpkin, a black cat, a haunted house and a witch. And they are on sale for just $17.99! These are exclusive to Williams Sonoma, you can't find them any where else.

Click here to see their website.