Holidays 2009

Every Christmas, it's a baking frenzy at my house. 

This year I made cookies for the Nguyen Annual Christmas party with the help of DJ Sandok and Zakuraba. We made snickerdoodles and white chocolate and macadamia nut cookies. Zakuraba had a great idea of rolling the white chocolate and macadamia nut cookies in cinnamon sugar. They were DELICIOSO! We had lots of fun baking and listening to the GLEE soundtrack :) Everyone at the party loved our cookies!

Thanks for the pic, DJ Sandok!

I also attended the Twin's Annual Christmas party. It was great seeing all my high school friends. I made them all cute little cake pops. Thanks to Bakerella for the idea; they were a huge hit!

My versions were French vanilla cake covered in semi-sweet chocolate (I just melted regular Toll House chocolate chips with some shortening). Then I topped them off with Christmas sprinkles. They were simple to make but they do take some time. Luckily you can always remelt the chocolate.

I can't wait to make more for other occasions. They're fun to make and look soooo adorable!



I also had a request from a friend to make a pecan pumpkin cheesecake pie, so I decided to make it and give it to him as a Christmas present. It is a layered pie that I baked in a spring form pan.

This is where I got the recipe and directions but I made some modifications.

Here's how I made it....
1. Glaze the pecans (like the recipe above but I didn't dip each one seperately, because that would have taken forever! I dumped all of the nuts in and picked them out one at a time)
2. Gram cracker crust and bake (I used the crust from Paula Deen's Pumpkin Cheesecake recipe)
3. Pecan pie layer and bake (I used the recipe above)
4. Pumpkin cheesecake layer and bake (I used Paula Deen's recipe) Because I used a different recipe, I had a lot of filling left over because it was meant to be in a springform pan alone. You can either reduce the recipe to half or do what I did. I made another gram cracker crust and made an extra pumpkin cheesecake!
5. Decorate the top of the pie with glazed pecans (Instead of completely covering the top of the pie with glazed pecans, I used them to cover a crack that formed and make it into a "K" because my friend's name starts with a K.)

I got to try some of the pie with him and his girlfriend. We enjoyed our slices with caffe lattes. The pie is quite rich and decadent so you definitely need a glass of milk or cup of coffee with this pie!