SPELLING BEE Time

BY BEA WESTERBERG

“There are 3 stages of man: He believes in Santa; He does not believe in Santa; He is Santa!”. Bob Phillys The December count down has picked up speed when one thinks that it is no longer just December 3rd or 4th. It is also not in the teens like December 15th or 17th. The days are beginning to start with “2” and that means we can almost see the whiskers on the reindeer! The numbers 24 and 25 are just heart beats away! Ready or not, we do the best we can and carry on.

Some of us have our lists all made and in order and check marks are posted in all or just about all the spaces. Good for you! You probably have also begun shopping for next Christmas and you know right where the matches are to light the Christmas candles because you checked twice. The rest of us are probably the really big group where things could be in active planning stages or even in the “I better get going” to the “What, it can’t be Christmas because we just had Thanksgiving” categories. Life will go on no matter which of the getting ready slots you are in.

How did the cookie baking plans go? My big plans got down to medium or low plans from sky high ones. I was going to do a wide assortment of candy barks; try every recipe I could find that was made with keeping the Ritz crackers in their original shape; make all my must have to make it Christmas for me cookies; and find or develop cookie and cup cake recipes that would be good great baked in muffin pans. Hopefully you did not place any bets on me getting everything done. You would not have expanded your spending money fund very much. I was all set to start the barks project and wanted to start with Peppermint bark which uses dark and white chocolates and peppermint extract. The elves must have taken the peppermint extract for some of their uses as I could not find it. I guess I should have checked twice before I got in the mood to do bark. I had paid a small fortune for the “real” extract earlier in the year by mail order and I knew I probably would not have time to reorder. I also was still recovering from the cost of the first order. Bark fever just kind of faded away so the Westerberg household has no bark of any kind for 2022.

I had gathered this very impressive list of things one can do while keeping the Ritz crackers in their original shape and still serve an army of people. The list would have gone to pages if one was to use the cracker in all forms such as making mock apple pie. I give myself a part of a brownie point on this project as I did make the chocolate dipped Ritz crackers with peanut butter in one batch and Nutella in another. I used different sprinkles on them if that counts for anything.

Less cookies from years past recipes got made because I got into the development of cookies baked in muffin cup pans. I got this bright idea when I found that Hastings Family Service’s wonderful shopping store had a ton of muffin pans for 75 cents each! I did come up with a good sugar cookie recipe that worked by just pressing the dough into the muffin cups so you did not need to roll and cut them. I did press some kisses in one batch so maybe that could be the peanut butter kisses that I did not make. The chocolate crinkle cookies from a cake mix did work out and several pans went to the fund raiser that the Nininger Homemakers hosted. I think the best item I made was not a cookie but Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes using a cake mix and a bottle of the beer. A black chocolate frosting with cocoa extract and a ganache was the icing. One more cupcake pan to the fund raiser with a full bottle of beer and the recipe! My baking spirit was getting drained and I still have a lot of 75 cent pans left to re-home; maybe next year. The dog loved this project because he got to sample some of the failures!

Great cookies and a huge HO HO HO to ALL.