Christmas Cookies Round 3 and Some Candy

I mentioned earlier that I always make 5 cookies at Christmas time, the 4 standards and 1 new one. This year's new cookie was the Mexican Hot Chocolate. I had high hopes for this.

But, alas, when all was said and done. It was a loser. I did not like it. Mr. said: "It's OK but I wouldn't care if I never ate another one." Because it is coated in cayenne pepper, it leaves your mouth hot. I usually like some spice but this was not good spice. Ick. I couldn't wait to eat something to get rid of the taste. I think it is because I don't expect my cookies to be hot and leave my mouth on fire.

Anyways, so I decided that I was going to unload all of these on my family rather than bring a few and hoard the rest for me and Mr. I didn't want to throw all of them away and I figure we have enough people so that everyone could have a taste.

I would be tempted to try these again but leave out the cayenne. One reviewer did this and seemed to like it. The chocolate cookie part I thought was decent.

To make up for this mess, I decided to make a batch of Snickerdoodles, one of Mr.'s favorites. They came out well although Mr. was in charge of rolling the balls in the cinnamon and sugar mixture and let's just say he was liberal. The only weird thing was that they came out very yellow. I think this was because I was using organic butter that is more colorful than generic for the local grocery store.

My last holiday treat was the making of some chocolate bark. I was inspired by Food Network on this one. See here.


I made a mixture of semi-sweet chocolate with peanut butter chips, pretzels and sea salt. Pretzels weren't on their list but I love chocolate pretzels so I went for it.

It also says to melt the chocolate in the microwave. I did this but I think a double boiler would be better. Our microwave is high and I had to bring a step stool over so that I could keep stirring it at 30 second intervals without having to keep taking the bowl down from the microwave. It was hot and a bit heavy. It also says this would take 3-5 minutes. It took me 1 1/2.

One more change, I did not do this on a cookie sheet since my two were baking Snickerdoodles. I used a 9x13 pan which worked fine.

I let the candy sit overnight and broke it apart the next day.

It turned out quite well.

I will be bringing this to our family's Christmas soiree to make up for the Mexican Hot Chocolates I am dumping on them.


Yum!