#26: Mint chocolate chip cookies, #27 Puppy Chow, #28 Sharp cheddar cheese straws

I always bake a TON at Christmas, but primarily for us to give away. This year I made three new recipes that were not hard at all but were still new and therefore I wanted to sneak them in to this calendar year as far as my "new recipe" goal goes:

#26: The only thing different here is that I made these with mint chips instead of chocolate chips. Woo, fancy, I know. But I made them from scratch and I also used Splenda because I gave them to my grandparents, who are all diabetic.



#27: I eat this almost every year but I've never actually made it myself. This finally gave me an excuse to use my 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup :-) This was gone in like 3 days flat, but we did give about half of it to Keegan's family.



#28: I love cheese straws. I love the extra kick the cayenne pepper gives them, but this year I took a recipe I found online and modified it to use Cabot's seriously sharp cheddar cheese, essentially the sharpest cheese I've seen at our grocery store. Oh man, they were delicious! I know for next year to double the recipe because we gave half to my family and half to Keegan's family and kept only the ones we "taste-tested" right out of the oven for ourselves.





This mixer and my double boiler (featured in the picture for the puppy chow, where I was melting the chocolate/peanut butter combo) were life-savers this year! It made everything so much faster and easier to clean up. Also for several recipes the only moisture is the butter and that is a PAIN to stir by hand.


This year's baking list:
-Oatmeal scotchies
-Chocolate and sea salt shortbread cookies
-Peppermint bark
-Puppy chow
-Peanut butter pie
-Cheesecake (made with my grandmom's top secret recipe)
-Mint chocolate chip cookies
-Cheese straws