Holiday Goodies

For Christmas this year Bret wanted to take some stuff to work for his coworkers. I decided to try being a Betty Crocker with one of my good friends and attempted to make some yummy Christmas goodies. We started off with making A very yummy microwave peanut brittle (just like peanut brittle but I don't like peanuts so we substituted with pecans). Our first batch we followed the recipe exact and torched the first batch... not a good start for us. The next 2-3 batches we thought were good - but they sadly didn't set up. (see first picture) We lovingly named this "the Christmas Blob" It tasted pretty good - but more like caramel than pecan brittle. Well at this point we decided to start on our homemade truffles. This was also a first for both of us out of a Kraft magazine I get each month with some really yummy stuff. We made regular cream cheese truffles and mint flavor truffles. It was pretty easy until we had to dip them in chocolate - that is a true art form that we have yet to find. They didn't turn out professional pretty but for first timers I think they ended up beautiful. On the tops of the truffles we put different foods to decorate them - crushed candy cane, nuts, powdered sugar, and red sprinkles.
We then took at nap/lunch break for the kids and two hours later we tried again with the brittle, only this time we were successful! We found out that with the first batch (thanks to help long distance from my amazingly patient mom, I called her a gazillion times) we hadn't cook the first batch long enough. After one hour, four batches, and several charred fingers (this stuff gets HOT!!) it was perfect!

What a fun experience. The lessons I learned:

• Don't eat the brittle while still hot no matter how good it looks
• Pecan Brittle hardens istantly when done right so you can't be slow
  
• use a hot pad when pouring the brittle into the cookie pan
• dipping truffles is a pain and I probably won't do it again