Skip to main content

Cookie Exchange

This year I hosted our 4th annual cookie exchange. Mr. T (ha, love that nick name) and I spent the better part of the weekend cleaning and getting the place ready for Christmas in time for the exchange. Miss E was off at her grandparents playing for the weekend.  Our poor cat was put through the wringer with all the activity.  For the exchange she hung out with everyone but was flaked out on the arm of a couch.

For the exchange we each made a dozen cookies/bars for each participant plus another dozen for tasting.  I made some stand by dishes for our regular get-togethers plus a new one that was a big hit.  I got this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, Garlic Butter Roasted Mushrooms,  They are so good.  I highly recommend making these.

To go with all the food, I made Colonial Hot Buttered Rum.  A now favourite recipe that I discovered a few years ago.  Left overs do store well in the fridge.  Though I would recommend to guest to bring a thermos for a to go bag, to be stored in the trunk on the way home, of course. *grin*

1. Hello Dollies
2. Skor Shortbread
3. Linzer Cookies
4. Chocolate Caramel Shortbread a.k.a Homemade Twix Bars
5. Biscotti with Pistachio and Cranberry

I just got the mug tonight at Pier 1.  Love that store.  It's a minor miracle that I only walked out of there with a mug and an ornament!

The Chocolate Caramel Shortbread was my contribution.  These are my absolute favourite.  The first time I had these I was at the Bowmanville Museum Christmas open house.  My mom was entertaining the crowd with Christmas carols.  My dad and I discovered these bars that were being passed around.  I think we both nabbed all the bars that were out.  Thus began my quest for a recipe.  I finally found the recipe on the web years before Google was popular, before I knew how to save a link.  Here is my version of the original recipe:


Chocolate Caramel Shortbread

Shortbread:
1 cup butter
1/2 cup white sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour

Beat butter and sugar until pale.  Add flour to form a soft dough.  Press dough into a 9 x 13 pan that is lined with parchment paper.  Bake shortbread in preheated oven at 350 for 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown.  Leave in pan until cool.

Caramel:
3/4 cup butter
1/3 cup white sugar
3 Tbsp corn syrup
1 (14oz) can sweetened condensed milk

Cook butter, sugar, corn syrup and sweetened condensed milk in a saucepan on low heat.  Bring to a boil, stirring constantly.  It will burn easily.  Boil for 5 to 7 minutes until it has thickened and has a pale caramel colour.  Spread caramel on cooled shortbread and let set for about 10 minutes.


Chocolate:
1 (8oz) bag of milk chocolate chips

Sprinkle chocolate chips over the caramel and let melt for about 5 minutes.  With a spatula spread the chocolate evenly over the caramel.  To cut, refrigerate for about 20 to 30 minutes before the chocolate gets too hard but the caramel isn't super gooey.

Comments

  1. So sorry I missed the exchange this year. I should try making my own Twix bars - Christmas won't be the same without them!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Little Pony Pull Apart Cupcake Cake

For this "cake" I made two dozen vanilla cupcakes and arranged them on the cake board in the shape of the rainbow and clouds.  To make sure the cupcakes didn't move I added a dab of icing on the bottom of each cupcake. It's not that often that I get to dye icing, or six different colours at once.  You can get a really good bicep workout, Miss E was kind enough to lend her figurines as models for the picture.  The clouds piped out perfectly.  The rainbow was a little more difficult.  Next time I would put a base coat on the cupcakes to help keep the top coat more level and easier to pipe over.

60th Jack Daniels Birthday Cake

 These types of cakes are so much fun to do.  Over the top goodness!  Especially, when the original plan  was to use airplane size bottles of Jack Daniel's instead of one 300mL bottle.  When Mr T went to the LCBO he was told that they longer sell them, at least as this location, due to high theft.  The next smallest size available was the 300mL bottle; though I doubt the birthday boy was disappointed! This was a 3 layer chocolate 8" cake with Bailey's buttercream topped off with Hershey pieces, mini chocolate chip cookies, Ferrero Rocher and Whoppers sitting on top of the chocolate ganache.

80th Birthday Cake and Cupcakes

For this 80th birthday I was asked to make 6" cake and 8 dozen cupcakes.  I was told that the birthday girl liked flowers so that's what I went with for the decorating. I absolutely love how this cake turned out.  It was a two layer 6" cookies n' cream (this time I didn't forget any ingredients!) cake.  I covered it in pale blue fondant, with soft pink and white flowers.  I made a large three layer rose the night before with some leaves so they would have enough time to dry out.  For "80", I cut out two of each number out so I could hide the cocktail stick between the two layers.  I had just enough of the soft pink ribbon to go around the bottom of the cake to finish it off. Now, for the cupcakes I did raspberry cupcake with raspberry mascarpone icing, lemon cupcake with lemon cream cheese icing, caramel cupcake with salted caramel icing topped with caramel sauce and cookies n' cream cupcake with buttercream icing.  Two dozen of each went t