The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Chocolate Peppermint Nuggets and Lots of Other Insanity

 

Okay.

I had a good chunk of this post completed and then I lost it.

Not good.

Not a good morning, actually, despite the lovely snow that fell.  Oh, and it's changing over to rain, so later this morning it's going to be a yucky, cold, slushy gross mess.  Winter wonderland, my...assssssssssssssthma.  Yeah, that's it.  Asthma.  Which...I don't really have.

Anyway. 

Grrr.

So here's these cookies, the ones you see in the picture above.

By all accounts, they're yummy.

I wouldn't know.  I haven't had one.  I'm giving up processed white stuff.  You know, things like flour and sugar.  Things I bake with all the time.  Yeah, I'm not eating it.  As of yesterday.  Actually, no, as of Sunday afternoon.

We're going skiing in February, and I, despite having lived somewhere or other in New England my whole entire crabby little life, I never learned to ski.  I can ice skate (or I could, once upon a time), but not ski.

Bill skiis.  The kids ski now.  So.  I'm.  Going.  To.  Take.  A.  Couple.  Of.  Lessons.  When.  We.  Go.  On.  Our.  Trip.

And it occurred to me the other day (that would be Sunday) that I don't want to be a clutzy, flabby ball of incompetence.  (Incompetence, not incontinence.  Just clarifying, in case you read that really fast.)

I know I'll be clutzy and incompetent.  I just would prefer not to be a flabby ball as I'm falling and crashing into the trees.  You know?  It would just help, mentally.  It would be like, "yeah, I'm falling and crashing into a tree, but hey, at least I'm being cool and athletic about it!"  Much better than "oh great, here I go, falling and rolling down the hill, accumulating snow all over my flabby ball of a self.  They're going to let the kids stick a carrot in my face and big sticks in my shoulders and call me Frosty after I bounce off this next tree."

So I started getting up early to exercise and I decided to just scrap the white stuff and alcohol, figuring that would be quickest and easiest to manage for the next couple months.

Yeah.

So that's why I haven't had one of those cookies.

And right about now, I could use one.  Or seventy.  Because I'm having a bit of a frantic morning in another part of my life, and it would be SO nice to just reheat my coffee and pour the container of these little chocolatey and pepperminty nuggets down my throat.  I just know it would make everything all better.

But I'm fighting that urge, people.  Fighting it.  Because I don't want to be a clutzy, flabby blob on the mountain.  Or the bunny slope.  Or just walking on the snow.  That's my motivation.

I really miss bread.

MY bread.  Bread I make.  Bread that is yummy.  Bread that is good.  Bread that is made from lovely, soft, all-purpose flour.  Pretty and fragrant and comforting all white bread.

As I typed that, I thought "comforting...comfort and joy" and isn't it just a huge laugh that I'm undertaking this complete and utter lifestyle and eatstyle change RIGHT NOW?  In DECEMBER?  THE OFFICIAL MONTH OF STARCH AND SUGAR CONSUMPTION?

I'm so good with the timing.

Anyway.  The cookies.

OH - and another thing.  (I am typing with superfast jittery fingers)  I thought I'd made these Chocolate Candy Canes last year, and I was frantically (FRANTICALLY!  DID I SPELL THAT CORRECTLY?????) looking through my poorly organized archives trying to find the post for those.  And then I took a look at the post where I took a picture of ALLLLLLLLLL the cookies I made last year, in all their containers on my dining room table.  And at the list that corresponds to all the little numbers I had attached to all the containers so I could itemize what I'd made.

And guess what.

I didn't make chocolate candy canes last year. 

Idiot.

Turns out I made them TWO years ago. 

And here's the post.  I finally found it.

Okay.

Well, I guess that's my idiot story of the morning.

So what I did this year, since I didn't want to make candy canes (the cookies are kind of fragile and tend to break at the crook of the cane) (maybe that's why I skipped them last year), is, I made the little nuggets. 

Here's the ingredient list:

4 cups of flour

1/2 tsp salt

4 sticks (1 lb) of unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1/2 tsp peppermint extract

8-10 little candy canes, crushed to smithereens

And here's what I did:

Sift together the flour and salt.  Set them aside.

In the bowl of your mixer, combine the butter and sugar and beat the heck out of them til they're light and fluffy.

Add in the flour mixture and blend gently until just combined.

Divide the dough into halves, and put them in separate bowls.

With one half of the dough, add in the vanilla and the cocoa powder.

With the other half of the dough, add in the peppermint extract and the crushed candy canes.

Shape each mass of dough into a ball, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for at least an hour.

~~~ (dum de dum...an hour goes by...) ~~~

Take out the dough.

 
Don't preheat your oven - the dough will need to chill again before baking.

Now, here's where it gets wacky.  (I know, you thought I'd already reached wacky and gone a mile or two past it.)

When I was first playing around with ideas, I thought it would be nice to roll out a bit of each dough into snake-like strands about a pencil-width thick. 

Then I'd press two strands, one of each flavor, together gently

And slice them into roughly 2 1/2" to 3" sections and gently twist them together

and pinch the ends together to hold them in place, and don't worry if the dough cracks or breaks while you're rolling it out or twisting the strands together 

because that happens to everyone, and so just press the dough back together and move on.

I did three cookie sheets' worth like that.

They looked so cool like that.  I put them in the oven to chill down again.  And then I baked a batch.

And they spread out and looked....well...ugly.

I tried adjusting the oven temp.

Still ugly.

My kids and husband liked them - and at the time I was still eating my beloved flour and sugar, and I thought they tasted just right, too.  They just looked...ugly.

So I left the dough in the fridge for a few more days while I avoided baking anything considered alternative cookie designs and finally just decided to cut off quarter inch sections from each batch of dough, press them together, then press down on them to flatten them in such a way that the resulting strip of dough was half chocolate, half peppermint, with the seam running the length of the strip.

I have to explain it all very well because I didn't take pictures.  I was not optimistic.

Anyway, I pressed these down to about a quarter of an inch or so, hacked sliced them into oh, chunks anywhere from 3/4" to a little over an inch wide, stuck them back on the cookie sheets (parchment-lined cookie sheets) and put them  back in the fridge.  For probably 3-4 hours.

And then I baked them.

And they came out great.  They didn't spread; they just puffed up a bit.  YAY!

And I quickly put them in a container, slapped the lid on, and threw them on a pile of other cookie-containing containers. 

And I try to ignore their call.

It's not easy, either.

But so far, I am succeeding.

Got Ink?

I know, I know.  I owe you a food post or two, I have another giveaway to announce, and who knows what else.

I will be posting all that stuff later.

I was, in fact, about to start a post about something I baked on Saturday morning, but then something else happened and I felt compelled to interrupt myself with this breaking snippet from my life here.

Julia got some Disney princess tattoos the other day in class.  It was another kid's birthday and all the kids got little goodie bags, which included tattoos and a pencil and I don't know what else.

Anyway, the other day she asked if she could put a tattoo on, and she did a good job doing it herself - I think it was Ariel, and Julia put it on her arm all by herself, and Ariel was right side up and everything.  Well, in swim class last night, the chlorine washed Ariel away, so this morning Julia asked if she could put on another tattoo.

I was checking email and said "Okay" and continued to stare at the laptop screen.

A few minutes later, Julia came back in the room.

"So, whaddaya think?"

I looked up.

It was Snow White today.

And...well...she was right side up, at least.

At Last! (And I really mean that - the "at last" part) We Have a Winner!

Looks pretty comfortable, doesn't he?

Well, we'll get to that in a minute.

First, I checked on the number of entries, and though there were 55 comments in that post, there were 54 actual entries, as one of the comments was a reply to someone else and that didn't seem like an actual entry to me. 

So, first job fell to Alex - to write out all the numbers.

Here's his work:

Sorry it's blurry.  I thought I'd taken two shots, with one actually being easy to see, but apparently not.  Still, you can see the numbers well enough.

Next job was for Alex to cut out all the individual numbers,

And for Julia to crumple each number into a ball or other crumply shape and put it in a bowl.

It's nice when the labor is happy.

 
Nice.  Back to work, missy!

Okay, the numbers are all cut and crumpled.  Time to get Scratchy.

Julia tries a little snuggling.

At this point, I'd like to direct you to the look on Scratchy's face.

Not enthused.  Not at all.

After a bit of sweet talk and shoving, Scratchy is off of the chair and not too thrilled about it.

Julia moves back to the bowl and tosses the crumpled paper onto the floor. 

 
We're hoping the crinkly sound will be enticing to Scratchy...kind of like the shredded paper in the big plastic bag, right?

But no.

 
We try again.  (Crinkle crinkle crinkle)

 
"You shoved me off the chair.  I'm still not okay with that."

Well, we try again, putting all the paper in the bowl again, shaking it around and DRAMATICALLY AND EXCITINGLY pouring it onto the floor.

No dice.

He leaves the room.

Julia tries to get him interested in the tail of a toy lizard.

We switch to a toy snake.  Longer tail, more enticing.

And then, with no explanation, he is done with the playing.

So we gathered the paper and threw it all near him.

"What the heck am I supposed to DO with these things?  Why do you keep throwing them at me?"

We went through that a few more times.  Toss the paper at him (all of it - so no entries were left out), he stares at it, and walks away.  Toss, stare, walk.

He flopped down on the floor.

"Look.  If I play with the bits of paper will that make you happy?  Will it?  Okay.  I'll swat at them with my little cat paws a few times, and then, after that, you really have to leave me alone.  Really.  Don't make me use the claws."

 
"I guess I like this one."

GRAB IT, JULIA!

 
Julia unfolded the paper.

 



And

At last

The winner is.....

What's that say?  Can you tilt your hand forward a bit, Julia?

That's better.

The winner is

Twenty-eight! 

And that means the winner is Christina!

Christina wrote:

"It's our first Christmas in our new house. I'm not doing Christmas but I get to do second Christmas in January for family that will be out of town. It will be casual and we will probably grill something."

Congratulations, Christina!  Please email me - jayne (at) barefootkitchenwitch (dot) com - so I can send your full name and address to the great people at President Brie and their marketing people and they can send out your Holiday Entertaining Kit!

And to all of you, THANK you so much for entering.  Your entries made me laugh, they made me feel nostalgic, hungry, and happy that so many of you decided to play!

Oh, and come back tomorrow, please.  For one thing, I'll probably finally have a food post, but even better, I've got another giveaway planned.  

'Tis the season, right?
 

Time's Up!

Actually, time was up over an hour ago. 

There are over fifty entries in this contest, and I have to say I had the best time reading them all.

I'll be forcing asking my kids to do the usual writing of all the numbers and cutting them into separate pieces of paper, crumpling them into little balls and then, because people seem to like it when Scratchy chooses the winner, I'll give him the honor.

And once that's all done, I'll be back here with a long rambling post detailing every little moment in the drawing preparation, ending, finally, after hours, with the winner.

The winner needs to email me - jayne (at) barefootkitchenwitch (dot) com - with his or her address and I'll pass that along to the folks with the cheese.  The Entertaining kit will be shipped out, and YAY!  Someone will be happy.

And for the people who won't be getting the Entertaining Kit (and really, if I could send them to ALL of you I would), come back again soon, because I think I've got another giveaway lined up.  I'm just in a giveaway kind of mood this month.

Okay, gotta go round up my little workers.  See you later!

Decorations for All

We've been doing things a bit differently this year.  Decorating the house in a more relaxed fashion.  Each day we've taken a little something else out of the closet in the basement and the kids are pretty much doing a lot of the actual placing of things around the house.

I had to help last night - we hung the stockings - all of them, including one for the lizard, who would probably bite Santa if given the opportunity.  I had to help with that because the things we hang the people stockings from are heavy and I don't want the kids messing with them.  And the pet stockings are hung on pushpins, and I don't want the kids messing with those either.

So I did the actual hanging of the stockings, but the kids have done nearly everything else so far.  And it's looking very festive around here.

Anyway, we came across this little cookie ornament Alex must have made at daycare years ago - it's dated 2003, so...well, okay, he probably didn't really make it himself, since he'd have been a year and a half at the time.  But anyway, it had lost whatever ribbon or string it originally dangled from, so I threaded some hemp cord through it and gave it to Alex to hang wherever he wanted.

And here's where he put it.

Yes.  That's the lizard tank. 

And the part I like best is that he hung it so that the front of the tree - the decorated side - is visible to the lizard.

And right now?  Alex is writing a letter to Santa to let him know that the blue stocking belongs to the lizard.  Just so he knows.  Because we didn't hang one for the lizard last year, and so Santa might not realize it.

It reads:  "Dear Santa,  Just so you know the stocking with the snowman is my lizard's.  Love, Alex."

Later I will grab Alex and give him annoying hugs and kisses because of this.

Cat of Wonder, Cat of Night

Back in the Saddle Again (or something along those lines)

I had a couple days of feeling overwhelmed and all sorts of other ugly thoughts and feelings, but that's passed now.  I worked on some more papery ornaments last night, need to photograph them and then post them.

Not a lot of new and interesting baking or cooking going on, though, at least not with photographs, but I'll try to get back to that next week.

For now, I'm trying to get all my Etsy stuff posted so it has a chance of selling, and then it'll be back to the cookie frenzy.

That's about it from here.

Carry on.

Centerfold

Brown Bagging It

Here, have a look:

 
Now look closer:

He's not a cookie ornament, he's made of paper.  Heavy-duty, grocery store issue, brown paper bags, to be specific.

And the icing?  It's royal icing - with some white glue added.

Looks tasty, doesn't he?

I also made these:

I love these.  My mother-in-law had these plastic cookie molds, the boy and the girl, and I just think they're sweet.  So I made them into papery ornaments as well. 

But don't worry - I'm also baking the edible kind of cookies, too.  My kitchen smells like cinnamon and cloves as I type!
  

New Toy

Last week my sister gave me two big bags of shredded paper from where she works.  You know, so I can make my papery snowflakes and things.

Big bags.

BIG bags.

I left one in the back of the car, and brought the other one inside.

And within oh, nanoseconds, Scratchy had claimed it as his own.

 
Have I told you that he likes plastic?  Plastic bags?  Yeah.  He chews on them.  It's pretty gross, actually.  It's like he's teething and somehow plastic bags are soothing to his puffy gums.

 

Only he's not teething.  He just...likes to chew on plastic.  He doesn't eat it, either.  Just...chews.  And I shoo him away and pick up whatever he's been mouthing, and it's usually wet and...well, it's just icky. 

So this?  This was like a humongous gift from my sister.  He's never even SEEN a plastic bag that big!  And not only that, it's got lots of...of crinkly crunchy wiggly things to play with, all stuffed inside!

And now I have to keep the big bag o' shreddings locked in a room, because if Scratchy has the opportunity, he's on the bag, chewing, digging holes in the plastic, and trembling with joy.

Yesterday I was making a big batch of paper slurry for more snowflakes and things, and so I kind of HAD to have the bag out in the kitchen.  I left the room for a moment, and, of course, Scratchy was on the bag in an instant.

 
PLAY TIME!!!

Mysterious invisible critters were inside, apparently, because he would pounce and pat at them with his paws, then regroup, choose another spot, and pounce and pat some more.

I'd try to shoo him away, just to keep the holes in the plastic at a minimum, but he does this thing whenever he's claimed a spot and doesn't want to budge, where he sort of wiggles down into place and magically makes himself twenty times heavier than he already is.  Kind of like "Oh yeah?  Well just try and push me away NOW, weakling human girl!"

Of course, I have my own magic, which involves determination and a good (but gentle and loving) shove.  That works.  Temporarily.