Sweet Homemade Treats

One of the best gifts any home baker or candy maker can give is one or more of their on creations. Everyone loves basket filled with homemade cookies or a tin of freshly made peanut brittle or fudge. Even better is a gingerbread house that's not only a fun nibble but a beautiful decoration.The best part is that treat making is relatively easy and not that labor intensive.

If you  have no time but still want to give a yummy gift then go to your local Walgreen's. They are selling Savor The Season Gingerbread House Kits.

It has everything, including already filled frosting tubes along with candy beads and Smarties along with peppermint discs for decoration. The house itself is a "prefab" already baked and cut out.It can be created in six easy steps. Walgreen's also sells gingerbread villages that are also easy to construct. It's three small homes along with a church. You can also create your own by using a mix.Cookies are another big treat . Make a few different kinds like the classic chocolate chip and shortbread along with decorated sugar cookies.Customize them with the recipient's name and even a cookie portrait. Sprinkle holiday candies like Hershey's mint Kisses or M&Ms for an added fancy treat.

Candy also is a treat. Homemade is even better..Many home chefs balk at the idea of making candy , afraid of either getting bad results or burned. Acquiring a candy thermometer helps.It can tell you exactly what temperature the mixture is . As for bad results, look for a clear, crisp day with no humidity. Moisture in the air has a definite and negative effect on candy's texture, creating a very soft texture when hard is desired. Simple candy recipes like fudge

is a great and yummy gift.For a quicker cook, use the microwave. A simple one calls for chocolate chips, and condensed milk. Add nuts such as walnuts and pecans  for texture or mint or brandy for an added boost of flavor.Peanut brittle is one of the simplest and most delicious to make.It's just sugar, butter,baking soda, and nuts cooked together to form a rich syrup. Vary it by subbing in other nuts such as walnuts or Macadamia nuts.Omit the nuts and you have toffee.

Homemade sweet treats are the best gifts in the world. It shows your love as well as your love of baking and candy making. Make a basket of any of these goodies for a wonderful Christmas memory.

Make The Ordinary Extraordinary

With the holidays coming up many home chefs feel too tired to cook this week, many home chefs are taking it easy this week. Meals will be simple, with home chefs saving the more elaborate fare for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Yet those simple meals can be made with an easy flourish. It's not even labor intensive. It's just simple food with a few extras.

One of the easiest meals to make is soup. Canned soup is nice.It's easy to heat up and serve. What makes it even better is serving hot rolls with it along with a salad. Some stores such as Acme have in store baked biscuits. These can be turned into, hot just from the oven ones simply by covering them with a wet paper towel and popping them into the microwave for thirty seconds.. This gives them a tender moist crumb along with being perfect for a pat of butter.They go great with any kind of soup from tomato to any cream. A soup that 's quick to make but has a true homemade taste is Bear Creek.It's just adding water to a powdered mix and stirring for fifteen minutes. They have great flavors like potato and cheddar beef along with an instant chili.If you;re still craving true homemade think frittata. This is the omelet's Italian cousin and can be made into a delicate crepelike concoction. Home chefs can add fancy extras such as pancetta or even truffles. Serve with a light Reisling for even more luxury.

Even the simplest of desserts can be turned into something extraordinary too. By no everyone is sick of all those holiday cookies.Try a store-bought angel food cake, such as the loaf ones from Stop & Shop. Pair it with sliced strawberries which can be bought fresh and whipped cream. Sliced peaches can also be used too..It's a nice, refreshing break from all those heavy holiday fruitcakes and desserts, almost like a return to summer.Another simple extravagance is sherbert in citrus. This is te time for oranges. Why not scoop them out and replace with layers of  unseeded orange slices and orange sherbert. The same can be done with lemons and limes too.Just remember to remove the seeds before preparing. Even though it is chilly out, a simple dish of vanilla ice cream can be a treat. Top it with one of Smucker's rich fudge or salted caramel toppings. These can be warmed in the microwave for a warm gooey treat.An even more luxurious treat is drizzling a good brandy over the scoops.It's a nice way to unwind after a hectic day of shopping or work.

Make the simple luxurious just by adding little extras to your meals and desserts. It makes for easy but lush eating. Perfect for this time of year.

A Fun Snowy Day In The Kitchen

A snowy day means a lot of fun to kids. It's a day out sledding down hills and making snow angels.It also can be a fun day inside, teaching the kids how to make everything from haute cuisine to fast food favorites.

Before you do anything, make sure you have all the ingredients. It's no fun running out of milk or flour and either braving the weather to go to the store or heading over to the neighbors with an empty measuring cup.If you're making any kind of dough, then have a five-pound sack of flour. Also have other essentials on hand too. Get extra eggs, cheese and tomatoes. Make sure the pantry is stocked with pizza and tomato sauces along with packets of easy to make sauces such as Hollandaise. Also, make sure you have enough milk. You'll need it for both cooking and making hot chocolate. The cooking fun can start with breakfast. French toast is an easy cook and can be made with any kind of bread, from challah  for a rich , chewy slice or whole wheat for a somewhat healthy start the day nosh. Older kids can even make it themselves. Younger home chefs can learn how to make maple butter - an easy mix of maple syrup and butter. You can add pumpkin pie spice for a zippier flavor. Kids can have fun with making omelets, adding favorites such as pepperoni and cheese for added taste.Breakfast sandwiches are also fun and kids can have a ball creating their own combos.

For the more sophisticated little gourmands, introduce them to Eggs Benedict This can be made not only for breakfast but also for lunch and even dinner.Again it's an easy cook that even six year olds can do. Depending upon their skill level, they can toast the Engish muffins or poach the eggs. Packaged Hollandaise sauce is a cinch to make.It's just adding melted butter and then stirring until well mixed. Those English muffins can also make neat pizzas too. Who doesn't love a personalized pizza dripping with tangy sauce and gooey ,mozzarella cheese. Load on your favorite toppings, from black olives to mushrooms to even salami. Stock up on several packages of English muffins because no one can stop at just one mini pie. For a more of a challenge, try tacos Kids not only love eating these , they also love making these as well. Again they can learn safe chopping techniques as they cut up the tomatoes and lettuce to cooking the meat fillings. Other fun Mexican  style treats are guacamole and salsa which again any baby novice chef can whip up. A snowy day also calls for spaghetti and meatballs. They're easy to make, especially the meatballs. It's the perfect time to introduce them to family recipes along with the enjoyment of making a satisfying meal.

A snowy day means fun , especially in the kitchen, Show the kids how to make favorite recipes to while away the hours. They'll enjoy not only cooking but making delicious dishes too.

That Holiday Baking Guilt

Yes, it's that time of the year when all home chefs are expected to magically transform into bakers. That's great if they have a lot of time along with having a knack for turning their kitchen into a Keebler tree. As for the rest of us? Uh oh, here comes that holiday baking guilt.

We all feel that our families deserve the best especially around the holidays. We want them to have the best presents, the best Christmas meal, the best time ever.In other words, a nearly impossible experience only exacerbated by giving them store-bought cookies to go with that Christmas morning hot cocoa or leaving Oreos out for Santa. There are a couple of solutions here. One is the classic  Pillsbury Slice and Bakes which gives the same homemade taste without all that work. As we can all attest the chocolate chip ones taste exactly like the Toll House recipe.The chocolate is gooey, even hours out of the oven and the cookie itself has rich brown sugar taste.There is also their sugar cookie flavor which is perfect if you have little artists who love to decorate. The snaps can even be turned into sandwich cookies thanks to the addition of a super easy cream cheese filling. It's just the cheese (or Neuchatel if you want to go fancy ) confectioner's sugar and a small drop of vanilla. Roll in red and green colored sugar for a fun holiday look.

Of course the second, easiest of the easiest holiday cookie solutions is bakery cookies. Some, such as the century old B&W Bakery in Hackensack, New Jersey have an amazing array of recipes that have been passed down from the bakery's original German owners. What I love about them is that they don;t follow trends. You're not going to see anise curry cupcakes or pistachio basil macarons. These are just simple butter stars and plain almond macarons.

You can see just how home made looking the butter stars are, with just a drop of green or red sugar in the middle, affixed with a simple egg white wash or glue. They are mouthfuls of pure butter and sugar, light, crisp and delicate. B&W's macarons' are the perfect holiday cookie, too. These bite size rounds have just the right amount of sweet chewiness with the perfectly laid back taste of almonds - and nothing else. I don;t feel guilty when I serve these to family and friends as a holiday treat.To me they're a holiday tradition, Also, with the cookies already taken care of, I can concentrate on wrapping and cleaning,No guilt there, just relief that I have more time freed up.

If you;re too busy to bake, don't. There are a few alternatives to scratch cookies, from Pillsbury to your favorite local bakery.Everyone can still have tasty sweet treats and be happy. No need to suffer any regret from not making the perfect cookie.

An Easy Breakfast Dinner

One of the most fun and easiest suppers to make is breakfast for dinner. It's a fun way of having all those yummy morning treats like eggs done anyway or French toast. A tasty one that's a crowd pleaser here in New Jersey is the classic pork roll or Taylor ham with soft boiled eggs. It's an easy cook for both novices and experienced chefs.

Before cooking the pork roll remember to make four slits at the edges, usually at the compass points , north east south and west. They cook up better and don't resemble sombreros Or Mexican hats as I used to call them).

They're supposed to be cooked in a minimum of butter or margarine, but I've always loved them swimming in a molten puddle of either one. It's good to fry the eggs in afterward.

I've opted for sunny side up or fried. The yolks are perfectly runny , making a delicious part of a trio of them, Taylor ham and white bread. This last you can use any brand but I prefer Pepperidge Farm. It has a sweetness and chewiness that works well with the other two textures. Pork roll also tastes good with fluffy scrambled eggs too or it can be cut up into omelets.  The choice is yours.

The Recipes Of The Year

The New York Times Food section has comes out with their recipes of the year. One of the most favorite and famous was Sam Sifton's Mississippi Roast. This was a vastly popular one, consisting of pot roast, a stick of butter and ranch dressing.. It's a great mid-winter dish, especially paired with egg noodles or homemade dumplings. A variation on that was a plain pot roast, using the beef cut for pot eu feu.Again this is a great chilly day meal.



Another fave was Middle Eastern Herb and Garlic Chicken.It's garlicky and lemony with the right amount of spice. Chicken also stars in an enchilada recipe with a tangy salsa verde.Creamy corn pasta with basil also using fresh corn and scallion. Fresh from the stand corn is recommended but since's it's December, use the frozen stuff.Use orechette or farfalle for the pasta.

Easy Meals For The Pre Holidays

The pre-holiday time can be crazy. It's a time of non-stop shopping or house cleaning. It's when  you're too tired to even chew, let alone cook. What to do?

I'll be honest I head to Acme or Stop and Shop.It's just easier. Look at what I got at my local Acme today.

It's their brand of gravy which tastes exactly like homemade.I paired it with their fresh from the bird slices of turkey

The meat was tender and juicy ,with a nice salty, crisp skin attached ,  tasting as if it came out of my new oven itself. I paired the two over slices of Pepperidge Farm sandwich bread.Yummmy!!!