Christmas Cookies

As promised, here are some of my holiday cookie recipes from top to bottom.

Chip & Dip Cookies (Mike's Grandma's favorite cookie)
1 cup butter, soften
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup coarsely crushed potato chips
3/4 cup coarsely crushed pretzels
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
1 cup white chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Combine butter and sugar, beat with mixer at med-high speed until fluffy. Add egg yolk and vanilla. Gradually add flour and mix well. Stir in potato chips and pretzels.
3. Shape level tablespoons of dough into 3 in. logs. Place on an ungreased baking sheet 1.5 inches apart. Bake 14-18 minutes or til edges are lightly browned. Cool completely.
4. Heat chocolate chips for 30 seconds, stir and dip one end of cookie in to the chocolate. Refrigorate.
5. Repeat last step with white chips.

Filled Chocolate Spritz
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup butter, cubed
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1.5 cups all-purpose flour
1/8 tsp baking soda

Peppermint Filling
1/4 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup confectioners' sugar
1 tsp milk
1/2 tsp peppermint extract
3-4 drops green food coloring

Glaze
2/3 cup milk chocolate chips
1 tsp shortening

1. In large microwave-safe bowl, melt chocolate chips; stir until smooth. Stir in the butter, brown sugar, eggs and vanilla. Add flour and baking soda; mix well. Cover refrigerate for 30 minutes or until easy to handle.

2. Using a cookie press (i didn't have one, so I just rolled them out) press with disk of your choice, press dough 2 in. apart onto ungreased baking sheets. bake at 375 for 6-8 minutes or until set. Remove to wire racks to cool.

3. In a small bowl, combine filling ingredients; stir until smooth. Spread on the bottom of half of the cookies; top with remaining cookies.

4. In a small microwave-safe bowl, melt milk chocolate chips and shortening; stir until blended. Drizzle over cookies. Let stand until set.

Peanut M&M Tea Cakes (My favorite Christmas Cookie)
1.5 cups powdered sugar
2 cups margarine
3 2/3 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt

Mix ingredients well. Chill dough. Wrap enough dough around peanut M&M to make a 1 inch ball. Bake on ungreased pan 8-12 minutes at 350.

Melt 1/4 cup chocolate chips, 1 Tbl creamy peanut butter, and 1 tsp shortening. Drizzle over cookies.

Tea Cakes with Butter Frosting
1 cup butter, softened
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk

Frosting
1/2 cup butter, softened
4 cups confectioners' sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3-5 tablespoons milk
Food coloring

1. In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Ass eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; add to the creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour or until easy to handle.

2. On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/4 in. thickness. Cut with floured 2/5 in cookie cutters. Using a floured spatula, place 1 in. apart on greased baking sheets. Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove to wire racks to cool completely.

3. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter, sugar, vanilla and enough milk to achieve spreading consistency. Add food coloring if desired. Frost cookies; sprinkle with colored sugars if desired.

Peppermint Meltaways
Cookie Ingredients
1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp peppermint extract
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup corn starch

Glaze Ingredients
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar

1. Combine butter, powder sugar, peppermint extract in large bowl. Beat at medium speed, scraping bowl often, until creamy. Reduce speed to low; add flour and cornstarch. Beat until well mixed. Cover; refrigerate until firm (30-60 minutes).

2. Heat oven to 350. Shape rounded teaspoonfuls of dough into 1 in. balls. Place 2 in. apart onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Let stand 1 minute; remove from cookie sheets. Cool completely.

Meanwhile, combine 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, 2 tablespoons butter, 1/4 tsp peppermint extract and enough milk for desired glazing consistency in small bowl. Stir in food color, if desired. Drizzle over cooled cookies. Immediately sprinkle with crushed candy.

Peanut Butter Cookies
3/4 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup shortening
1 1/4 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
2 tbls milk
1 tbl vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt

Heat oven to 375. Combine peanut butter, shortening, brown sugar, milk and vanilla in a blow. Beat at medium speed until well blended. Add egg. Beat until blended. Combine flour, baking soda and salt. Add to creamed mixture at low speed. Drop by rounded tablespoons 2 in. apart onto greased baking sheet. Flatten slightly and draw star pattern with edge of fork. Bake for 7-8 minutes or until set and just beginning to brown. Cool 2 minutes on baking sheet and then move to cooling rack.

Mennonite Monday - Peppernuts

Mennonite Monday started because I wanted to make recipes from the Bethesda Mennonite Church Cookbooks (both the yellow and the white cookbook for those of you who own them). I also wanted to take pictures of each recipe that I made, so I would know for future reference what the recipe should look like. I am by no means a great cook, but I think it will be fun to try new and different recipes each week. Not all of these recipes are for ethnic Mennonite food, but the women from Henderson know how to cook, so I can safely say that these recipes will be good. Check back each Monday for a new recipe and feel free to leave a comment if you have a favorite recipe from these cookbooks, or if you have some tips on what I should make and how I should make it.

~

Okay this recipe is not in either of the church cookbooks, but I wanted to make Peppernuts for Christmas because it is a German tradition. The recipes in the church cookbook have chopped up dates and nuts, which I didn't really want to mess with, so I opted for this recipe.

Peppernuts

1/2 cup butter 1 1/2 tsp anise oil

1 cup sugar 1 tsp cinnamon

1 egg 1/4 tsp nutmeg

1 cup syrup 1/4 tsp ginger

1 cup sour cream 1/2 tsp soda

7 1/2 cups flour

Dough should be quite stiff. Shape into rolls (snakes?) about the size of a nickel and chill or freeze. Cut into thin slices and bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes.

I mixed the egg, sugar and butter first.

Then I mixed in the syrup and sour cream.

I added half of the flour and then the rest of the ingredients before I added the rest of the flour. This is because the batter gets really stiff and I wanted the flavor ingredient to mix all of the way through.

This is what the Anise Oil looks like. I found it at our local pharmacy. While it is a little pricey (around $18), it is a key ingredient to make the peppernuts taste right.

I mixed in the rest of the flour and as you can see the mixture is very stiff. You would not be able to mix this by hand.

Roll the dough into snakes (bottom of the picture) and then place in the refrigerator or freeze to chill. Then cut the snake into little pieces (middle of the picture) and space theme around the pan so they don't touch (top of the picture). They don't grow much, so you can put them fairly close together.

Mike even agreed to help me with this part as long as he could watch a football game at the same time.

Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. When the time goes off, they will look under cooked, but they will harder as they cool. We learned that the hard way with our first batch. Since they didn't look done we kept adding more time and the peppernuts were very hard when we finally took them out, so stick to the 8-10 minutes.

Interesting Christmas

Mike and I haven't left our house since Wednesday the 23rd. Today is Saturday the 26th and I don't think we will leave before Monday because we are stuck in a blizzard. However I shouldn't complain, at least we have power now. Our power has be on and off during the last three days, but yesterday it went of at 2:30 p.m. and didn't come back on until 8:30 this morning. It was 46 degrees in our house this morning and we could see our breath. So what does your house look like when you have been stranded for three days, sometimes without power?

You have blankets covering doorways to the coldest rooms in the house and dog toys everywhere.

Doors to the outside covered with blankets.

Gallons of water saved up in case the power goes out again and the bath tub is full too. When you don't have a water tower (like towns do) water doesn't go very far.

Piles of gifts that can't be delivered to the intended recipients.

Cookies the we can't give away. At least there is food to eat.

Lots of clothes and cuddling.

Outside it is COLD. The temperature is in the teens and the wind is over 40 mph. We haven't had much snow, a couple of inches, but the wind has blown that snow into huge drifts, some as high was 14 feet, on our yard.

Branches are falling of the trees and you can only see half of our shed because the snow is so high.

This is where you should be able to see the road that we need to leave on. Unfortunately it is very drifted over and even if it was opened, the wind would blow it back shut very quickly.

It looks like Mike and I will have some more bonding time over the next few days. If the power stays on, maybe I can catch up on some blogs, order our Christmas cards and watch a good Christmas movie. However if the power goes off again, I always have the last book in the Twilight series to finish. Wish us luck.

Mennonite Monday - Pop Corn Candy

Mennonite Monday started because I wanted to make recipes from the Bethesda Mennonite Church Cookbooks (both the yellow and the white cookbook for those of you who own them). I also wanted to take pictures of each recipe that I made, so I would know for future reference what the recipe should look like. I am by no means a great cook, but I think it will be fun to try new and different recipes each week. Not all of these recipes are for ethnic Mennonite food, but the women from Henderson know how to cook, so I can safely say that these recipes will be good. Check back each Monday for a new recipe and feel free to leave a comment if you have a favorite recipe from these cookbooks, or if you have some tips on what I should make and how I should make it.

~

We are having Mennonite Tuesday this week, but I promise I have a good excuse. As you may have realized, I was on vacation last week. As soon as we arrived home on Saturday we hit the ground running and I finally found some time to post my recipe for this week.

Since Christmas is on Friday, I wanted to make some type of candy. Unfortunately my cupboards were practically bare after a week of vacation, so I didn't have many ingredients to work with. I did find all the ingredients for Pop Corn Candy on page 90 of the white cookbook.

Pop Corn Candy
1 cup sugar
1 cup white syrup
1 cup butter
2 gallons popcorn
1 tbl soda
1 tbl vinegar


I have an air popper for the microwave so I popped it first and measured it with a pitcher naturally.

I also spread the popcorn out on wax paper because I knew the popcorn would be sticky and hard to stir in a bowl.

Cook sugar, syrup and butter for 5 minutes.

I didn't start my 5 minute timer until this point when the mixture was warm and the butter was half way melted.

Add 1 tbl soda. At this point I was worried that my pot was too small and I was going to have a big mess but...
next you add the vinegar, which made the mixture go down some. Remove from heat and stir.

Pour over 2 gallons of popcorn. May also be used to make popcorn balls.

I hope all of you have a wonderful holiday season and can spend a good amount of time with family.

You can look forward to a vacation review, Christmas cookie recipes and hopefully the yearly Bergen Christmas letter on this blog during the next week or two.

Its Begining to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Two weekends ago I spent most of my time decorating for Christmas and I'm pretty excited about how everything turned out.

One thing I really wanted to do this year was hang ornaments in the windows in my living room. On Black Friday I was able to find blue and brown ornaments, which I made into ornament clusters.

Our living room tree has random ornaments from our childhood and some ornaments that we have collected since we have been married. I have started buying ornaments when we go on vacation, so this year I was able to add a Independence of the Seas cruise ornament and an ornament from the Green Bay Packers game.

The more formal sunroom tree.

Mennonite Monday - Potatoes Au Gratin

Mennonite Monday started because I wanted to make recipes from the Bethesda Mennonite Church Cookbooks (both the yellow and the white cookbook for those of you who own them). I also wanted to take pictures of each recipe that I made, so I would know for future reference what the recipe should look like. I am by no means a great cook, but I think it will be fun to try new and different recipes each week. Not all of these recipes are for ethnic Mennonite food, but the women from Henderson know how to cook, so I can safely say that these recipes will be good. Check back each Monday for a new recipe and feel free to leave a comment if you have a favorite recipe from these cookbooks, or if you have some tips on what I should make and how I should make it.

~

I made this recipe during harvest and it went over really well. There are many different recipes for potatoes (there are eight different recipes in the white church cookbook) but I decided to make the one at the top of page 223.

Potatoes Au Gratin
2 lbs frozen has browns
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 can cream of chicken or cream of onion soup
2 cups grated cheese
1 cup milk
1 cup sour cream
2 cups cornflakes, crushed

Put potatoes in 9 x 13" pan or large casserole. Then salt, pepper, onion, 1/4 cup melted butter and cheese.

Mix soup, sour cream and milk. Pour over potatoes. ( I forgot to mix these three ingredients and just put them individually on the potatoes, which seamed to work fine.)

Top with crushed corn flakes mixed with remaining melted butter.

Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

Oasis Here I Come

More details to come next week.

Check Check Check

Some of the items on my list were difficult to photograph, so this post will highlight what I was able to accomplish.

run 4 miles

In September when I wrote my list, I had been running/walking in the evenings. I slowly started to run more and more and worked up to running 2.5 miles straight. I was athletic in high school and participated in every sport at one time or another, but I was a short distance runner. In track I would run the approach for long jump, the 100, 200 and sometimes the 400. This is why I wanted to set my goal to run farther than I ever had before. Shortly after I posted my list I was able accomplish that goal by running around the section. Every week after that until November, I ran 4 miles one day of the week.

go to the dentist
In October I went to the dentist after several years. It was 4 years to be exact, but luckily I didn't have any cavities. Hopefully I won't wait another 4 years to go again.

read a book

I'm not a big reader. I don't mind reading good books, but I don't take the time to read very often, so it takes me forever to read a book. That is why I chose an easy book Marley & Me. Mike and I have two labs our black lab, Hunter, acts like Marley in the book. Our yellow lab, Bessie, looks like Marley. Overall I thought the book was pretty good and would recommend it to anyone wanting an easy reading book.


donate something
So when I put this item on my list, I was planning to donate blood for the first time. I faint pretty easily, so I have never tried to give blood, but I have always wanted too. A blood drive was scheduled in town on November 5 with the Community Blood Bank and I was ready, however, then the Chamber's Strategic Planning Kick-Off meeting was scheduled for November 5 as well I knew I couldn't do both. Especially if I had a hard time donating blood, so I found a different way to donate. I took 4 sacks of cloths and household item to our church for the Etc. Shop.

volunteer somewhere different
This year I joined the Preschool Committee at our church. This is a very small way to volunteer my time, but it was been very enjoyable to volunteer on a board for someone else because I'm usually working with volunteers on other board through my job at the Chamber.

Ride in the tractor - Check

I had many opportunities to ride with Mike in the tractor during harvest, which was on my list of things to do before my birthday.

Unfortunately, I never took my camera along, so this picture of my niece riding in the tractor with Mike will have to do.

Mennonite Monday - Stuffed Green Peppers

Mennonite Monday started because I wanted to make recipes from the Bethesda Mennonite Church Cookbooks (both the yellow and the white cookbook for those of you who own them). I also wanted to take pictures of each recipe that I made, so I would know for future reference what the recipe should look like. I am by no means a great cook, but I think it will be fun to try new and different recipes each week. Not all of these recipes are for ethnic Mennonite food, but the women from Henderson know how to cook, so I can safely say that these recipes will be good. Check back each Monday for a new recipe and feel free to leave a comment if you have a favorite recipe from these cookbooks, or if you have some tips on what I should make and how I should make it.

~

I had two green peppers in the refrigerator that needed to be used, so I decided to try the Stuffed Green Peppers on page 221 of the white church cookbook. As you will see, I only had two green peppers, so I only did half the recipe.

Stuffed Green Peppers
4 green peppers
1 lb. hamburger
1 small onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 cup raw rice
1/2 tsp salt
1 quart stewed tomatoes
1/2 cup catsup

Precook cleaned green peppers in salted water for 5 minutes.

Saute meat and onion until brown. Stir in remaining ingredients. (I cooked my hamburger in my Pampered Chef micro cooker in the microwave and then mixed the rest of the ingredients in that container.)

Stuff into pepper. Place in greased baking dishing, putting excess filling around edge. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes.