Busy Christmas Season

So this post is coming to you via my iPhone. We've been busy at the Yost house and now that I have a few minutes to post, Isaac is cuddly and wanting to be put down for a nap. We've made Christmas cookies, decorated the house, put up a tree and decorated it, went to a Christmas party, had a weekend visitor, and we've all been sick. In the midst of all that, Isaac started climbing the stairs and I was hired to design decorations for a ball.

Let's start with Christmas cookies! We made lots...classic cutouts, candy cane blossoms, peanut butter kisses, orange meringue, spritz, and snicker doodle. I also made pretzel bites. Everyone has their favorite so we made our favorites and traditional cookies that we have every year.
We thought we'd have way too many and we did but we don't have as many left to take with us on our after Christmas trip as I thought we would.

Pretzel bites.  Delicious blend of crunchy and smooth, chocolate and salt.  We used our left over kisses...note: the candy cane kisses melt a lot faster!! I think it is due to the white chocolate....next time we'll have to separate them.

Once my phone finishes uploading and Isaac goes down for his nap, I'll have pictures and some recipes available. So stay tuned!

Classic cut-outs complete with Steelers, Yost Family, and of course...the Christmas Ogre.

Finally, I'm going to add those pictures and recipes.  I didn't monitor my phone so of course it didn't really upload all my photos...

Snickerdoodles.  These were pretty good but they hardened faster than the other cookies.  Not sure if I can get away with less time or if I need a better recipe.

I also, of course, forgot to take pictures of some of the cookies. Oh well I guess. I won't give all the recipes, but I will give a few...and my thoughts. The two recipes that I am going to share are the peanut butter kisses and candy cane blossoms. A few of the others are family recipes that I'm just not quite ready to hand out yet, and the two I choose to share are the ones that I have the most comments for.

Peanut Butter Kisses...always popular.

Peanut Butter Kisses...I don't remember where I got this recipe (probably pinterest), sorry!
Ingredients:
48 Kisses (I didn't use that many because I made my cookies a little bigger)
1/2 c shortening
3/4 c peanut butter
1/3 c sugar
1/3 c brown sugar
1 egg
2 Tbl milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
sugar for dusting
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Line cookie sheet with parchment paper (I forgot to do this, but didn't have an issue removing them).
Cream shortening and peanut butter together. Beat in sugars until fluffy.  Add egg, milk, and vanilla.  Mix (sifted) flour, soda, and salt.  Add to the wet mixture.  Shape into 1 inch balls.  Roll in sugar.  Bake 8-10 minutes.  Place kiss immediately and move to cooling rack.
My tidbits: so I don't have a sifter, therefore my flour wasn't sifted and they turned out great.  I made the dough the night before so that we could bake all in one day.  I took the dough out in the morning to let it return to room temp but it ended up being slightly sticky.  It might be different if you never put it in the fridge but next time I won't let it sit quite so long before I bake it.  I found myself making different size balls since I also don't have a cookie dough scoop and just use a spoon.  After making these and a few others, I discovered something...use a tablespoon!  I used a tablespoon to scoop and measure the balls for the snickerdoodles and they turned out the same size and the perfect size.  Something I'll have to remember for next year.  These were also perfect because they didn't dry out much (I stored extra in tupperware but put some out during the day) and they didn't crumble like a lot of peanut butter cookies do.

Candy Cane Blossoms...this recipe came out of one of my cooking magazines and mine look nothing like their picture.

 Ingredients:
1 c butter, softened
1 c sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
3 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
4 candy canes, finely crushed
48 candy cane kisses (again, I didn't need this many but I did need more of these than the chocolate ones)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy (seems every recipe require this). Beat in egg and vanilla.  Mix flour, baking powder, and salt.  Add to cream mixture.  Shape into 1 inch balls and roll in candy canes.  Place on ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake for 10-12 minutes until bottoms are golden.  Immediate press in kisses and move to cooling rack.
My notes: These weren't my favorite.  They were a little dense and reminded me of Russian Tea cakes, a little too much flour and not as sweet as I expect a cookie to be.  My husband thought they were great though, so just a difference of opinion.  I used a processor to crush the candy canes (thought it'd be cleaner and not so loud with Isaac in the house).  I avoided making them into dust, but after making the first batch I liked the dust better.  They little chunks of candy cane melt and stick to the pan, not bad but they were threatening to burn.  It was also easier to roll the dough in the dust. I also ended up using 6 candy canes.  4 wasn't quite enough so I crushed more after the first couple pans went in the oven.  The kisses also melted really fast.  I'd give them a minute or two to cool first, then put the kisses on.  Since they melted so fast, they also took longer to set.  I stored them in a tupperware container and they stayed pretty soft but the ones that had the bigger chunks of candy cane tended to stick to other cookies easily.  I think I'll look for a different recipe next year, but if I can't find one I know they are good...just not great in my opinion.