Christmas treats

Every year we try to make some delicious treats for the neighbors. This year's choice was a small amount of homemade Irish creme, and a lot of chocolate peanut butter balls.

[UPDATE: See note at bottom of this post]

Since the Irish creme has to ripen for a week, I made it first. (Full instructions can be found here.)

One of the ingredients in Irish creme is chocolate syrup. But wait, we're out! I was prepared to make a grumpy run to the grocery store when Don suggested I consult my faithful "Cheaper and Better" to see if I could make it myself. Sure enough.

A few chocolate chips, a little bit of butter, some boiling water, and voilà: chocolate syrup. Gotta love that book.

I only needed four teaspoons, though, so I put the rest in the fridge.

Then I finished making the Irish creme. Normally I use vodka ('cuz it's cheap and flavorless) even though the liqueur is traditionally made with whiskey...

But wait! We had whiskey! A friend of Don's visited a couple years ago and brought along a bottle of good stuff.

It never even got cracked open and has been sitting gathering dust (literally) in our pantry ever since.

I decided to split the batch (since we only had a limited amount of Gentleman Jack). I made half the Irish creme with vodka...

...and half with whiskey.

We'll do a taste comparison and see which we like better.

With the Irish creme made and put into a dark cabinet to ripen...

...I turned my attention to making chocolate peanut butter balls, for which I went into full-scale production mode. Not all of our neighbors drink alcohol (we have a lot of Mormon friends), but sweets are always appreciated.

I picked up some pretty tins at a thrift store...

...and packed them with goodies. The tins are of various sizes, which is good. The smallest will go to a single friend. The largest will go to a family with seven children.

With all the treats done, we can now look forward to Older Daughter flying in from New Jersey on Christmas Eve.

(Bonus photo: sunset on the winter solstice.)

[UPDATE: Some readers have noted used copies of Cheaper and Better were going for outrageous prices on Amazon. Sure enough, they are. Yowza. I found another source here which might be better.]

Christmas goodies and Christmas flowers

We've been swimming in eggs lately. All our young hens are now laying, and we're getting between eight and a dozen eggs a day. They tend to add up quickly.

Besides giving a bunch away, what better way to use a whole lotta eggs than by making homemade Irish Cream?

I found the recipe for Irish Cream in the wonderful book Cheaper and Better.


Irish Cream only has six ingredients: eggs, sweetened condensed milk, instant coffee, chocolate syrup, vodka, and cream (in that order). I tell ya, this recipe is better than Bailey's! I multiply the recipe by ten in order to have enough on hand for friends and neighbors, which uses up twenty of my eggs. Instructions for making Irish Cream are here.

With a 10x batch like this, I start off using my largest mixing bowl...

...and finish up using my biggest stock pot.

The bottles must be dark for the Irish Cream to ripen properly. But here's the thing -- I ran out of dark bottles. So...

...I recycled two of the three empty vodka bottles. But since the bottles are supposed to be dark, I wrapped them in duct tape. Don called this "Redneck Irish cream." Clearly these won't be gift bottles -- we'll keep these for ourselves and toast in Christmas with the contents.

For our non-drinking neighbors (and we have many LDS neighbors), I make giganto-batches of shortbread cookies. Here's some of the mess.

By the way, the paperwork you see on the table is Older Daughter's application for nanny school. We submitted the paperwork on Wednesday evening (by email), making her eligible for a small financial scholarship.

Here's the first batch of cookies. I still have many more to make to have enough for friends, neighbors, and some service people in our community.

Oh, and my Christmas cactus is blooming. Read this to understand why this little plant is so significant. Just had to throw in a photo.

Christmas goodies

I woke up at 2:30 am this morning. Grunt. Couldn't get back to sleep.

As I lay there in bed, it occurred to me that if I got up now, I could get all my Christmas baking (which I'd been putting off) done early. So I did. Fired up the oven at 3 am.

This year I made shortbread for our friends and neighbors. The shortbread recipe I use is as follows:

1 cup flour
1/2 cup rice flour
1 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar

This is a recipe where butter should always be used, never margarine.

And surprisingly, the secret ingredient is rice flour, which makes the cookie very delicate and flaky.

I made numerous octuple-batches of shortbread today. I don't know if I ever want to see another bit of shortbread. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

First, mix the two flours together and set aside.

Since chilled butter is rock-hard, I soften it in the microwave.

Mix the softened butter with the sugar until the sugar has dissolved into the butter.

Then add the flour mix.

It may be tough to use a mixer, so be prepared to mix it by hand if necessary.

Form small balls of dough, no more than about an inch across (they'll spread out). By the way if these pans look messy, it's because I'd already baked about fifteen or sixteen batches of shortbread by the time it was light enough to take these photos.

Gently flatten the balls with the bottom of a tumbler dipped in sugar.

Bake at 350F for, well, I don't know. In my oven, it's 11 minutes exactly. You'll have to learn what time works for you. Do NOT overbake these -- overly-browned shortbread just doesn't taste good.

These cookies are very rich and very fragile. They're not the sort of cookie you can ship through the mail!

I baked batch after batch after batch. Long ago lost count. I think it was 24 batches, but I'm not sure.

By the time I called it quits nine hours after I started, I can heartily assure you I didn't want to see another shortbread cookie until next Christmas. (Each of those piles has between seven and nine cookies.)

Massive cleanup effort.

Ah, but my day's work wasn't done. Next I had to make an octuple batch of my (cough) world-famous Irish cream liqueur. Details for this treat are posted here.

Sixteen eggs. Beat, then add nine cans of sweetened condensed milk.

Now three tablespoons each instant coffee and chocolate syrup.

Mix well.

After this I transfer things to my largest stock pot before adding a gallon of cream...

...and a gallon of vodka. Let me tell you, this stuff has a kick. Drink it at home when you're not planning on going anywhere.

Next I hauled out my dusty collection of dark-brown bottles donated by friends over the years. Folks know to return the bottles to me after they're empty, so I can re-use them again.

I cleaned them thoroughly, then filled them up with the raw liqueur. Here the wet bottles are draining a bit before I toweled them dry.

This liqueur won't be ripe for a week and should be stored in a dark place during that time. I made sure to label the ripe date so friends would know when they could indulge. A good New Year's treat!

Here's the loot for the day.

I divvied up the cookies into Christmas bags for friends and neighbors.

By the end of the day, I'm worn out. But our gifts are ready.

Tomorrow is our big day of celebration, so I'm off to bed. Hopefully I won't have any more 2:30 am wakeup calls!