Now, I don’t know about you, but I absolutely LOVE cooking for the holidays. LOVE. One of my favorite parts is making the menu…and my favorite part of making the menu is choosing the appetizers. WHY, You ask?
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Howdy and Welcome to Monday Coffee Break! Since the day after Thanksgiving I’ve been thinking about my Christmas gift list this year. I wanted to do something a little different than usual, so I came up with the idea of making gift baskets for everyone on my list. Now, I know what you’re thinking, baskets are for Easter. Ok, maybe you’re not thinking that, but I was initially until I got this image out of my head.
This Feels Wrong…
For the baskets I purchased one personal gift, then I added two handmade gifts. The first is a handmade snow globe, the other was a baked treat. I’ll throw up some pics as my baskets take shape. (ummm, yeah…sorry to anyone on my list who reads this, the gig may be up as to what you’ll be receiving this year.) But I digress! Let’s take a look at some treats that would make anyone on your Holiday gift list smile…There are so many good ones here I may have to include two baked treats in the baskets. I’m pretty sure no one will complain.
First up is this aptly named, Christmas Crack, from Mommy’s Kitchen. This is going in all of my baskets…If I don’t eat all of it first. This toffee bark just seems like pure heaven- Sweet, chocolatey, salty, and caramel-y.
This next feature is not a treat in itself, unless you’re into drinking vanilla extract-no judgement- but it does make a beautiful and extremely useful gift. Vanilla extract is in almost every baked treat and here’s a great how-to for making your own vanilla extract from Piece of Cake. You can also find a link to where to buy the vanilla beans you need to make the extract. There is also a recipe for vanilla sugar. What more could you need?! Yum!
Image from Piece of Cake
Up next is this Lemon Meringue Toffee from Wholesome Ireland. I’ll admit, this looks a little advanced (maybe just for me, a very novice baker), but boy oh boy does it look worth it. And how refreshing is it to see a little bit of lemon in the sea of super rich deserts we usually find this time of year? Also, it looks really beautiful and would make a great holiday gift!
Image from Wholesome Ireland
Alcohol, how did you sneak in here?! Here we have a cool recipe for Homemade Limoncello from Diane Abroad. A classic Italian liquor, this would make a great gift for any one on your list who is into cocktails. Great alone as a desert digestif, or mixed into a cocktail, this is sure to please and impress.
Image by Diane Abroad
The next awesome Holiday treat gift comes to us from Christina over at Small Kitchen Chronicles. This Super Duper Chocolate Toffee Crunch is absolutely perfect for a holiday gift. It seems like it would really lend itself to a variety of festive packaging and hold well…and of course it looks mouthwateringly delicious. Another awesome one Christina!
Image from Small Kitchen Chronicles
If someone gave me this next gift I would be in heaven. This Citrus Salt from Laura Friendly looks amazing and is sooo useful for the foodie in your life. I think I just dropped a hint…at myself. I hope you’re listening self, because you need to make this.
Image from Laura Friendly
And last but not least we have these salted caramels from Penguin in the Kitchen. These look adorable all wrapped up, and they feel very gourmet. Anyone would be lucky to get these as a treat!
Image from Penguin in the Kitchen
And that sums up my favorite finds for Holiday gift treats. I hope you found a few things that inspired you and helped make deciding what to give for the holidays a little bit easier. Even though handmade gifts may seem simple, there really is nothing that says, “you’re special” like giving something you made with your own two hands, a little ingenuity, and a dash of love.
Do you have any favorite handmade holiday gift ideas? I’d love to hear from you!
See you Thursday with this week’s recipe!
xoxo,
Hello all and welcome to Monday Coffee Break. I’m posting late tonight (house buying excitement/toddler antics have delayed my writing!) so for all intents and purposes let’s call this Monday Wine Break Tonight, shall we? Good. My Malbec agrees. Let me start by saying I hope everyone’s holiday was a smashing success, and by that I mean, you ate way too much, had a few cocktails, and laughed a lot. Let’s take a gander at my humble Turkey Day Table…
and let’s get one with the bird in here…
I also made these cute little recipe booklets for our family, that had Thanksgiving day recipes in them.
I used a template from The TomKat Studio to make the recipe booklets and also the menu for my table.
To my suprise there were actually no weird antics or bizarre happenings that occurred this holiday when my family gathered together. My husband and I have decided that that, in itself, is quite bizarre. So instead of familial madness…
Photo from Ecological Sociology
…I decided I wanted to share this recipe for Makowiec with you. This polish poppyseed pastry is a family tradition on my husbands side of the family. His Grandmother used to make it on every holiday and the family would devoir it. When she passed away a few years ago, he asked me if I would be willing to try to make it. Of course I was honored, and I gave it my best shot.
The first year was good, but not exactly as he remembered. The second year, I was almost there. Then this year…I nailed it: “This is exactly like my grandmother’s tasted.” I used a recipe from Kiss Me I’m Polish ( I feel like this is how I hit the home run this year).
Ingredients
4 cups flour
1 packet active dry yeast
1 cup warm milk (110 to 115 degrees)
1/2 cup sugar
7 Tbsp butter, melted
1 egg
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg white
1 egg, beaten lightly
1 portion of filling (you will need two jars of poppyseed filling, one for each roll)
1. Dissolve yeast, 1 Tablespoon sugar in the warm milk. Add 3/4 cup flour and let stand in a warm place for 15 minutes.
2. Beat the egg yolk with 1/2 cup sugar light and double in volume. Add the yolk mixture, 1 egg, salt, remaining flour, and butter to the yeast mixture.
3. Knead dough until it becomes smooth and elastic, and stop sticking to your hand. Cover and and let stand in a warm place until it is double in size (about 1 hour).
4. Divide the dough into 2 parts. Roll each piece into a rectangle about 1/4″ thick and brush on the egg white. Spread the poppy seed filling onto each rectangle, leaving a clean 1/2″ border around the edges.
5. Roll up the dough and seal the seams as best as you can. Brush the beaten egg mixture on the tops of the roll and bake for 40 minutes at 400 F.
Not too shabby, eh? For me, this is what holiday’s are all about. Carrying on family traditions and making those special people in your life feel even more extra special. Is there really any better way to do both of those things than with food? I say no. No , there is not.
And so I leave you with this folks. I hope you enjoyed this almost midnight version of Monday Coffee/Wine Break…I know I did. See you on Thursday with a recipe that I think might surprise everyone…The fact that I pulled it off definitely suprised me!
xoxo,
First let me say, Yay! because I love Monday Coffee Break. I love sharing my weekend food finds with all of you. Second let me say, Boooo! Is it already monday?
You know, I had the idea for the Monday Coffee Break post for a while…but it wasnt called coffee break, and it wasnt neccesarily going to be a Monday. But then…Eureka! Two things made this combo happen.
1. I absolutely abhor Monday
(Please reference the picture above. That is what I feel like on Monday)
2. I absolutely love sharing food ideas with all of you!
(What better way to brighten a Monday then to share some food love with my lovely readers?)
And so, my darlings, Monday Coffee Break was born. This Monday, and these next weeks coming up, are going to be particularly exciting/stressful/bite-your-nails-off kind of weeks. I feel like many of my recipes coming up will contain slightly more wine than usual…a dash for the sauce…and a few glasses for the cook!
Now, onto this Monday’s feature…Cheese. I can’t say enough about our friend cheese. Perfect on almost anything as a centerpiece, garnish or finishing touch, what other food can also say that it is just as fantastic, if not more fantastic on it’s own. Just shmeared on some bread and shoved into the mouth (yes, I intentionally said shmeared. I specifically went to college and became a writer so I could learn all of the rules and then break them by using words like shmeared. Hey, if James Joyce can make up an entire fake language for Finnegan’s Wake, I can say shmeared, right? Thank you. That’s what I think too.)
But I digress! On to our friend cheese. Ah, the magic of cheese. From the delicate triple creams to the sharp and pungent cheddars that the French once banned in public…they are all beautiful in my eyes… and even more so in my mouth.
First up, this Savory Galette, by Bev Cooks. How good does this look? Created with only a few ingredients, this dish really shows up at the party. It can show up at my party any time. Doesn’t even need to call ahead.
This Parsnip Gratin by Moeys Kitchen looks absolutely to die for. The site is in Russian, but you can always use the handy translate trick I talked about in last weeks post to read it whatever language you prefer!
Ok. This Pull Apart Pizza Bread from Stick a Fork in it looks so good. Yes, it’s basically ooey, gooey, pizza bread. Yeah. Exactly. There is nothing wrong with that sentence. I want to eat this.
Next, we have this beauty from Tartine and Apron strings. This Roasted Beet Salad with Crispy Goat Cheese looks so fresh, festive, and delish. Look at these colors! And honestly, anything topped with a crispy, breaded goat cheese cake is going to be good. It just is. bottom line.
And the Italian in me could not do this post without a nod to one of my favorite ways to use a classic Italian dish, Risotto. These Cheesy Risotto Balls, or Arancini, from Food is Luv is a great, simple recipe for these crispy bites of cheese heaven.
Next we have this Egg casserole with Roquefort and bresaola from Now I’m a Cook. How good does this look for a chilly winter morning? Yum. (This recipe is in French, here’s a link to a loose English translation if you are not lucky enough to be able read French…I really need to learn.) Just look at this beauty…
And finally we absolutely must let the cheese stand alone. I gotta get at least one pun in here people 😉 This cheese plate is from Ezra Pound Cake. The post it is from is called “Cheese 101” and it has some great tips for assembling the perfect cheese plate. It also features Ina Garten’s cheese plate rules, which is my guideline for all of my cheese plates.
I hope you all enjoyed this walk down cheese lane. Oh my God. There needs to be an actual cheese lane. Wait. There kind of is in certain markets. Anywhoooo, you know what I mean, right? Of course you do.
See you guys on Thursday when I’ll be sharing this weeks recipe, and check out my menu page near the end of the week where I’ll be sharing my own Thanksgiving Feast menu.
xxoo,
Beck
“Seriously so good! My husband asked me to make MORE! He never does that!!” -Chylanne
