8th Dish of Christmas 2010 - Oatmeal Cranberry Chocolate Chip Cookies

As I was watching Saturday's Giada episode, it dawned on me that I had all the ingredients in the kitchen to make these cookies and that they would be great bagged up for the girl's as a small Christmas gift. So with two hours before the fondue party, I printed out the recipe and got to work!

Here's a trick - I had been running the oven to make my other goodies that day so to quickly soften the butter, I sliced it and put it on a dish in the oven and shut the door. The residual heat softened it really quickly!













I packaged them in a simple brown paper bag and off Mike and I went to the fondue party!

7th Dish of Christmas 2010 - Soft Pretzel Sticks

For another fondue party goodie, I made these soft pretzel sticks using this Bobby Flay recipe for soft pretzels. They are made using a pretty basic dough that you let rise for only an hour. After cutting or shaping your dough, they are boiled for a short period of time then baked with plenty of salt on top. They are great dipped in the cheese fondue or in the mustard (also in the recipe) that I brought along!

active yeast

dough after rise

cut dough

after bake

6th Dish of Christmas 2010 - Orange Marshmallows

When I started talking about making marshmallows, I always got the same response... "what do you mean make them? don't they come from... well, i don't know where they come from."

Well. Way back, people actually used a marshmallow plant. It didn't grow actual marshmallows but Egyptians did use an extract from the root to make confections and later the French used the extract in meringues. Today's marshmallows actually use no marshmallow. They now "come" from unflavored gelatin, sugar, water and the kitchen-aid basically.

I saw this Giada recipe during a Halloween episode and thought orange marshmallows would be great for dipping in chocolate at the fondue party. The recipe is not hard per se... it just takes great patience which I generally do not have in the kitchen. Waiting for the mixture to come to 240 degrees on the stove took a while! Once the marshmallows are whipped into a frenzy - it dries very quickly! Basically the reason Mike and I are calling them abstract marshmallows. No perfect square ones here! Some commenters said they tried to flatten the marshmallows into a 13x9 pan instead of having giant marshmallows from an 8x8 pan. I was not quick enough to flatten it all out before it started drying but I got them somewhat smaller than I would have had otherwise.

I'll definitely make these again and work on the technique as well as try out new flavors!

unflavored gelatin & water

condensed milk, sugar & water

getting there...

whip on high!

marshmallow!

beater after scraping

attempting to make them in a 9x13 pan... almost made it!

use LOTS of powdered sugar while cutting the marshmallows... they are STICKY

final result... can you see the orange zest in it??