Tuesday at the Table, the holiday baking edition

Some people might be stressed out by the fact that their house is a mess and they have company coming this weekend. Some people might express some dismay over not having decorated their tree or wrapped a single gift. Others might be a little on edge at seeing their to-do list piling up more and more each day.

Not me, readers. Nope, this girl just ordered her christmas cards tonight. That's right. There's 10 days until Christmas and I'm just ordering cards. What was I thinking? They probably won't even get here until next week, at which point I will most likely say "haha, whatever!" and stash them somewhere secret so that my husband isn't aware of my wastefulness. Then I'll forget where I stashed them, so that I have to begin this whole process next year.

Sometimes I make no sense.

Moving on! I wanted to share some edible holidays gifts with you. This is the first year I've done any baking, and the results have been well received. And if you know me, I don't make complicated recipes, so these are all easy to do and require a minimum of ingredients.

First off: oreo truffles! These are sinfully rich. I took them to work today, and in less than 30 minutes, 30 truffles had been devoured by 15 women (and one man). It was insane!

Oreo truffles
One package oreos
One bar cream cheese
Chocolate
Crisco

Place the oreos in your food processor and grind them until they they are a fine powder. Add in your cream cheese and let the food processor do the mixing for you. You should mix until you can no longer see any white. Of course, if you don't have a food processor, you can do this by hand. Just place your oreos into a zip lock bag and smash them to bits. Add in the cream cheese and mix by hand.

Roll the mixture into small balls and place in the fridge for one hour. Melt one package of chocolate (I recommend ghiardelli brand) with 2 tablespoons crisco. I use the microwave, melting in 20 second increments.

Place a toothpick in your balls, and dip quickly into the chocolate. You can also use a fork to roll the ball around, then pick it up and let the chocolate drizzle off before placing it on your baking sheet lined with waxed paper. (Did I skip that part? Line your baking sheet with waxed paper - step 1.) Dipping is an art. The first 15 I did were horrendously ugly, but it just got better after that.

Place the dipped balls into the fridge for one hour, and then store. Voila! Aren't they pretty?

Chocolate drizzled popcorn
One bag movie theatre butter popcorn
1/4 cup chocolate morsels
1/4 cup Nutella or peanut butter
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1 tablespoon butter
Powdered sugar

Pop your popcorn. While your corn is popping, melt your chocolate, peanut butter, corn syrup, and butter over low heat on the stove. Pick through the popcorn and remove any unpopped kernels, and then place popcorn in a mixing bowl. Once the chocolate mixture is melted, pour over the popcorn and stir gently to coat.

Spread the popcorn on a baking sheet and bake at 300 degrees for 5 minutes. Let the popcorn cool, and then dust lightly with powdered sugar.

Doesn't it look cute in the popcorn buckets? I got them from the $1 spot at Target.

The next two pictures are of peppermint bark and cranberry-pistachio bark. Both are super easy to make: just melt one package of chocolate with 2 tablespoons crisco (if you are wondering, the crisco helps the chocolate to spread/coat evenly, stops seizing, and gives the chocolate a glossy finish). Spread on a baking sheet lined with waxed paper. Sprinkle the top generously with your toppings, and press the topping lightly down into the chocolate. For the cranberry-pistachio bark, I used 1/3 cup of pistachios and 1/3 cup cranberries. I'm not sure the exact amount of peppermints I used - I used up all the peppermints left over from my peppermint wreath tutorial. :)



I had some leftover chocolate, so I dipped pretzel rods first into white chocolate (let it cool and set) and then into milk chocolate. Easy peasy!

Someone asked me about the marshmallows - well, these were a complete failure. I'm not sure what I did wrong, but they just didn't poof up. I am going to try again later in the week, and I'll post the recipes and pics if it turns out well. I used the recipe from Little Birdie Secrets, but mine did not turn out like hers.

I also made Jill's (Controlling My Chaos) Pecan Molasses Toffee, but instead of being a hard toffee, mine is crumbly. It is still good, but obviously I went wrong somewhere. Check out the link - it is super yummy, and makes a ton.

That's all I've got for today. If you still need some easy, last minute ideas, hopefully you found some here!