12 Treats of Christmas: #11 Mini Mint Kiss Pies

Oh my goodness. I’ve found a new blog to love. Just like my love of collecting cookbooks, I’ve started “collecting” cooking blogs. Who are these people who are not only talented in the kitchen, but talented behind a camera lense, too? Right now I religiously follow Pioneer Woman, Smitten Kitchen, How Sweet It Is, and Tasty Kitchen (sister blog to PW). There are many others that I know are out there and waiting, but there is just not enough time in the day. Of course, once you see them, you’ll understand what a complete amateur I am, but at least I can be your resource, right? Anyway, I was feverishly entering a blog giveaway ($250 Best Buy gift card…I’ll let you know if I win LOL) and I fell on Picky Palate and this recipe. Read the recipe below then jump on over here to see the step-by-step pictures that accompany this recipe and made me want to make Kiss Pies immediately.

MINI MINT KISS PIES

1 refrigerated pie crust, thawed

14 Mint Truffle Hershey Kisses

1 egg white whisked with 1 tablespoon water

Powdered sugar for dusting

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Roll out pie dough onto a lightly floured counter top.

3. Place a kiss on the pie dough and cut a 2 ½ to 3 inch circle around it with a knife (or find an appropriately sized glass and use the mouth to “cut” around the kiss. *Be strategic about where you place the kisses so that you can maximize use of your dough!

4. For first fold, bring opposite sides of circle up together (as if you’re creating a taco). Pinch the two edges around top of kiss.

5. Now, fold up the other two sides of remaining dough up to the tip of the kiss pinching edge. Now press together all touching edges (will look like a square envelope with a kiss inside.

6. Continue cutting dough around kisses until all dough is used up & repeating steps 4 & 5; you can get between 10-14 rounds cut, especially if you re-roll your scraps.

7. Brush all little “pies” with egg white wash, then sprinkle with granulated sugar.

8. Bake for 20-28 minutes or until little pies are golden. Remove and let cool for 5 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.

9. Dust each with powdered sugar and serve.

12 Treats of Christmas: #10 Cinnamon Sugar Pecans

I used to not like any type of nut at all. While I still don’t like ANY type of nut in ANY cookie (bars, sometimes; cookies—never), I have certainly expanded my horizons to include some delicious recipes that include nuts. Pecans are the main ingredient here—the highlight. And I love them. Although, I would say it might be hard to not like anything that is smothered in cinnamon and sugar!

These package up so nicely. Delicious and festive, how can you go wrong?

CINNAMON SUGAR PECANS

1 lb. pecan halves

1 egg white

1 Tablespoon water

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

2. Mix sugar, salt, and cinnamon in a small bowl; set aside.

3. In another bowl, beat egg white and water with electric mixer until frothy, but not stiff. Add pecans and mix to coat.

4. Add sugar, salt, cinnamon mixture to pecans. Mix.

5. Spread on large cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes.

6. Package to give away, or serve in a decorative bowl.

12 Treats of Christmas: #9 French Silk Pastry Puffs

In brainstorming an easy way to make the absolutely AMAZING French Silk Pie recipe that follows into an individual treat recipe, I simply needed to determine the best crust. There are several ways one could go here—and most of them can be found in the chilled or frozen sections of the supermarket. You could use the little individual tart shells (the same ones you would use if you were making individual quiches), or you cut up a refrigerated pie crust and shape the dough into individual pie shells in a mini-muffin tin. You could easily use the Tiny Holiday Tart crust recipe in Treat #8. You could use wonton wrappers pressed into muffin tins—they bake into a tasty, thin, crispy shell—or phyllo dough, which does the same thing.

None of my ideas seemed special enough, and this French silk is very special. Then, I thought of it: Puff Pastry. Do you know why puff pastry is so delightful? It has to do with layers and layers of paper-thin pastry dough separated by butter. And when baked, the steam let off by the butter and moisture in the dough cause it to puff into rich, buttery light-as-air goodness. Now, making puff-pastry shall be left to highly trained, highly paid pastry chefs. Luckily we can buy puff pastry in the freezer section! Even more exciting for this particular recipe is that Pepperidge Farm makes Puff Pastry Shells. Perfect!! I found the vessel which shall carry the silk!

My mom introduced me to this recipe. She included it in a cookbook she wrote for me as a Christmas gift “Recipes from Mom’s Kitchen and Stories from her Heart.” Don’t your eyes just tear up at reading the title? Anyway…she notes that “this recipe for French Silk Chocolate Pie first appeared in 1951, when it won $1000 in a bake-off contest.”

FRENCH SILK CHOCOLATE PUFFS

½ cup (one stick) butter, cut into 8 equal parts

¾ cup sugar

1 square (1 ounce) UNSWEETENED chocolate, melted and cooled

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 large eggs

12 Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry Shells (found in the frozen section)

Instructions:

First, prepare pastry shells as directed on package. Cool completely.

In a small mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Beat in chocolate and vanilla until well-blended. Add eggs, one at a time, beating with an electric mixer at medium speed, for FIVE MINUTES after EACH addition. Chill.

Just before you plan to serve the finished product, pipe equal amounts of filling into each pastry shell. While not necessary, you might garnish by drizzling with chocolate or a dollop of whipped cream.

NOTES:

• You may substitute 1 tablespoon oil mixed with 3 tablespoons baking cocoa if you don't have any unsweetened squares. We have done this many times and the outcome is equally delightful every time!
• If you want to make this into a pie, bake your favorite pie crust recipe (or store-bought) and fill it with the prepared filling.

12 Treats of Christmas: #8 Tiny Holiday Tarts

This recipe came from a friend of mine who also enjoys cooking and baking—probably as much as I do. She included these cute little tarts in the tin of treats that she gave our family, and then was generous enough to share the recipe with me. I haven’t had a chance to try making them yet, but I did taste the Pecan Pie Filling version and the Brownie-Nut Filling version. On the copy of the recipe there were a couple of other fillings that sounded interesting, so I am including them, too!

TINY HOLIDAY TARTS
½ cup butter or margarine, softened
1 3-ounce package cream cheese, softened
1 cup all-purpose flour
Desired Filling

In a small mixer bowl beat together butter and cream cheese. Stir in flour. Cover and chill about 1 hour or until easy to handle. Shape into 1 inch balls. Press onto the bottom and up sides of un-greased mini-muffin cups (1 ¾ inch). Fill each with 1 rounded teaspoon of filling. Bake in a 325 degree oven for 25-30 minutes or until done. Cool slightly in pan. Remove and cool well. Makes 24.
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Pecan Pie Filling: Beat together 1 egg, ¾ cup packed brown sugar; 1 tablespoon melted butter or margarine, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Stir in ½ cup coarsely chopped pecans.
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Brownie-Nut Filling: In a small saucepan heat and stir ½ cup semi-sweet chocolate pieces and 2 tablespoons butter or margarine over low heat until melted. Remove from heat. Stir in 1/3 cup sugar, 1 beaten egg, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Place a whole filbert or peanut in each pastry. Top with 1 rounded teaspoon chocolate mixture.
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Almond-Raspberry Filling: Divide ¼ cup red raspberry preserves among pastries (about ½ teaspoon each). Beat together 1 egg, ½ cup sugar, and ½ cup almond paste (crumbled). Spoon 1 level teaspoon of the almond mixture over the preserves. Sprinkle with coarsely chopped sliced almonds. If desired, drizzle cooled baked tarts with additional raspberry preserves.
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Pumpkin-Sour Cream Filling: Beat together 1 egg, ½ cup canned pumpkin, 1/3 cup sugar, ¼ cup dairy sour cream, 1 tablespoon milk, and ½ teaspoon pumpkin pie spice. If desired, pipe or dollop whipped cream on cooled baked tarts. This one would be fun to serve at Thanksgiving time!

12 Treats of Christmas: #7 Brown Sugar Shortbread

Here was the coolest part about making these cookies. Within 2 minutes of finding the recipe, I was making them. I did not have to make a special trip to the store for an ingredient I needed. Yippee!! These cookies appeared in the Taste of Home’s Best-Loved Cookies & Candies 2010 magazine. I had barely had it day before MANY pages were “dog-eared” with recipes I planned to try.

These crisp, buttery cookies have three ingredients: butter, brown sugar, and AP flour (all-purpose, in case you were wondering). How bad can that be? (Did I just sound like Ina Garten? I hope not. She kind of annoys me.)

Anyway—the whole family loved these shortbreads, including my husband, who is not much of a sweets/cookies eater.

BROWN SUGAR SHORTBREAD

1 cup butter, softened (Yay for the “soften” button on the microwave…best invention ever!)

½ cup packed brown sugar

2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually stir in flour and mix well (I used the KitchenAid for this recipe).

NOTE: The dough will be really crumbly. The magazine did not mention how crumbly it would be, and I was concerned I had made a mistake. Now…Ina Garten (who annoys me) did have something valuable to say the other day, and it totally related to this recipe: sometimes the water content in butter is lower, making dough (like shortbread dough) not come together. She says to add just a touch (droplets, people) of water to help your dough out. Had I watched that episode before I made this recipe, I would have tried the water trick.

2. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth, about 3 minutes.

3. Pat (I rolled) into a 1/3” thick rectangle measuring 11” x 8”.

4. Cut into strips 2” x 1” strips. Place 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheets. Prick with a fork. (NOTE: Instead of strips, I just used a biscuit cutter and made circles.)

5. Bake at 300 degrees for 25 minutes or until the bottoms are lightly browned. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pan to wire rack.

12 Treats of Christmas: #6 Oh Henry Bars

The copy of the recipe I have for these treats came from my choir teacher, in her handwriting--you know--back before blogs, email, google searches, etc. Back when a recipe was shared on a recipe card. Even as far back as high school I was already collecting recipes. I don't remember exactly when or where my choir teacher would have served these to me, but I have held on to that recipe card for about 19 years, so that tells you how good these are.

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I love these, but apparently corn syrup is bad for you. I grew up in the middle of corn fields, so I understand the importance of purchasing and cooking with corn syrup every now and then. It's important to keep the corn farmers in business.

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On the subject of Oh Henry Bars...guessing they're supposed to taste like an Oh Henry! candy bar. I’ve never had one, and have never seen one in real life, so I don’t know if that is true. You can research Oh Henry! bars, because you’ve got too much time on your hands, and you’ll find that they have peanuts in them. No peanuts in this recipe--peanut butter? Yes. Peanuts? No. And that’s just fine with me, because these are perfect just the way they are.

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Now go and make yourself some. Or make your neighbors some. Or make your students some and see if they ask for the recipe…in which case you should write out by hand to make them feel special.

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OH HENRY BARS

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2 cups oatmeal

¼ c. corn syrup

1 stick butter or margarine

½ c. brown sugar

4 oz. chocolate chips

2 tablespoons peanut butter

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1. Cream corn syrup, butter, and brown sugar together.

2. Add oatmeal, mix thoroughly. Try not to eat the whole bowl of batter now…but you definitely should taste it!

3. Spread mixture in 8 x 8 pan…or double every ingredient and throw it in a 9x13.

4. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes—make sure you bake until bubbling around the edges. If you don’t bake it long enough, the bars fall apart. Keep an eye and don’t be afraid to go a minute or two over the 10 minute mark.

5. Cool.

6. Melt chocolate chips and peanut butter together. If you’re doing it in the microwave, make sure to stir frequently.

7. Spread chocolate/peanut butter mixture over the top of the oatmeal crust.

8. Cool until set.

I like to keep the bars refrigeratated until I’m going to cut them. This helps the bars not fall apart or crumble.

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A nice way to serve them (because they’re kind of gooey when room temperature) would be to cut them up when they’re really cool and place them in individual cupcake papers on a serving tray.

12 Treats of Christmas: #5 Praline-Graham Crackers

Super easy, super yummy—Christmastime or anytime. My mom gave me this recipe—back in June 2007 (not that my memory is so awesome...that's the date of her email). Every time I take these treats to a gathering, they go very quickly!

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For a Christmas treat, break apart in a “rustic” fashion (not every piece the same size, some rough edges, etc) like you would with brittle or bark. Then package the pieces in a holiday back and tie with festive ribbon!

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PRALINE-GRAHAM CRACKERS

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1 box regular graham crackers

1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine

1 ½ cups brown sugar

2 cups chopped pecans

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1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Line a 15x10x1 inch cookie sheet (regular-sized) with aluminum foil. This isn’t mandatory, but will certainly help with clean up. By the way—your cookie sheet needs a lip (jelly roll, sheet cake pan)—NOT the type of cookie sheet that is completely flat with no “edge.”

3. Place graham crackers in a single layer on cookie sheet—as many as will fit.

4. Boil the butter, sugar and pecans for 2 minutes, stirring constantly.

5. Spread on crackers. Bake 10 minutes.

6. Allow to cool, break apart.