Christmas Baking This Year and Last

So I hope this is not indicative of my Christmas baking future... but here are some pictures of last year's batch of Christmas cookies:

Even I was impressed I was able to churn those babies out while balancing work and third-trimester pregnancy! And here's what everyone got this year:

Not to play down the deliciousness of this year's gift, because as much thought and love went into these chocolate goodies as the cookies of previous years... but significantly less time was needed for these gifts than yesteryear's Christmas cookie assembly line. Let's just say that a delay in home renos, combined with a child whose birthday is in the Christmas season, and being the go-to house for Christmas dinner made for a very tight timeline for Christmas gift making. Throw in some ambitious sewing and crafting projects and I pretty much set myself an impossible Christmas to-do list :P  So with that in mind, I'm going to hope that this year was an anomaly in my Christmas baking history and try to be better with my scheduling next year. (More on what else I did this Christmas in later posts.)

And in case you're wondering if I was giving away strange chocolate lollipops, check out the great hot chocolate on a stick ideas at Giver's Log. Also, even if you think it's not worth the effort... it totally is worth it for homemade marshmallows (@ the kitchn).

btw: You should totally check out the other great stuff on Giver's Log. I love the cupcake domes... that'll probably be the takeaway craft at our next birthday party!

I have to admit that I am proud of the good temper I got one those hot choco sticks though! I didn't use a thermometer... just low heat, decent quality chocolate and a good amount of unmelted chocolate bits to be my tempering seeds. It's actually the first time that I've been patient and diligent enough to get chocolate that was shiny and crrrr-acked right out of the mold. My version of the Giver's Log recipe was:

Hot Chocolate On A Stick (modified from Giver's Log recipe)

• 24 oz chocolate, well chopped (I liked a 16 oz dark to 8 oz milk chocolate ratio)
• 3/4 cup cocoa, sifted
• 1 cup icing sugar, sifted
• 1/8 to 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

This filled two ice cube trays, or made 28 cubes of hot chocolate. Each of which dissolve into 8-12 ounces of whole milk to make a more-than-chocolatey-enough mug of goodness. I found that I didn't need to use a piping bag to fill the trays... just two spoons and a lot of tapping to get the chocolate to settle down into the compartments. I hate letting chocolate go to waste so the chocolate that I didn't "couldn't" scrape out of the bowl just got washed out with some hot milk, as did any chocolate messy bits that landed on the ice cube tray, instead of in it.

The lovely finished morsels were packaged together with a baggie full of homemade vanilla marshmallows for the perfect "after the kids have gone to bed" snack. 

Oh and those marshmallows are to die for... I even had a few marshmallow-haters converted! Another post on another day for what else I learned to do after making homemade marshmallows...