Christmas Baking with Cheryl and The Great Ethan Allen

With a slight break in the stockings this weekend,  Cheryl has decided that tonight would be a good time to experiment with all those magazine recipes that HyVee shoves at us.     We have a few characters on our list to give goodies to,  and some of those people  need them before Christmas.   So let's begin.

We first attempted English Butter Toffee.  We have done this before and failed miserably,  but every failure begets new learning!   And since Cheryl and I are very good at failing at just about everything in life,  that means we are bound to eventually get better.   And  so it goes with our Toffee Experiment.


I missed the labor intensive photo Op of me over a bubbling cauldron stirring feverishly.   After hours of intense struggle and labor,  I managed to get the toffee part to set up.   It was up to Cheryl to melt the chocolate and set up the pans for cool-down.


I  was then in charge of the Chocolate topping.   Smooth and even spatula work makes for an even topping of Chocolate.    Next add in the nuts!   Boom!   English Toffee fit for the King of France! ( It's that good!)

Next,   the Cornflake Cookies.   Or, as the Magazine would have you believe....  Snicker doodle Party Cookies.  Sounds like a PR stunt, but we decided to give them a go.

Melt butter until it froths and browns,  add Sugar, add eggs,  and other cookie stuff.    Roll up a ball and roll it in cornflakes.  Then roll in a sugar mixed with several spices.  ( cardamom and something else.)   Then Bake. 

As Cheryl described the taste.."Interesting"   Take that for what it is worth.  Not bad, Not Great either.   Just.... interesting.  I'll probably end up eating them rather than feeding the birds.

Then again,  these are for other people.   They can be the guinea pigs for this  one.  Perhaps they will find them more than interesting and think we are masters at baking.   ( Or idiots who don't know how to boil water.)   We shall see.   Either way,  they will probably be polite and not tell us how they truly feel about things.

So one final push for stockings as we try to catch a breath  and recover some sanity.   Hopefully the Holiday season is not killing everyone else this year.   It will all be over before you know it and then  it will seem like it was over too quickly.   Thanks for stopping in!