Winter Treat (all homemade): Hot Chocolate, Whipped Cream & Marshmallows

Marshmallow recipe was originally found in Martha's holiday issue but I noticed a few mistakes and found the recipe on-line (where it made more sense)- except 2/3 cup of water isn't listed in the ingredients at the top & she didn't mention to dust the marshmallows with confectioner's sugar before cutting them out. I figure after making these 5 times I should have the method perfected! The biggest bear was pouring out the marshmallows into the baking sheet and then cleaning up. These are sticky!!!!!!!!

The hot chocolate recipe is courtesy of December's Bon Appetit. It originally calls for peppermint extract but I made just plain hot chocolate and boy is it yummy!

Happy Thanksgiving!

TWD: Arborio Rice Pudding White, Black (or both!)

I love rice pudding!!!!!

Kozy Shack rice pudding with a little cinnamon has always been a comfort snack for me- how exciting to make it on my own!

I gave this a shot earlier in the week before the P's & Q's came up and had rice soup. I cooked the rice for about 40 minutes and went half & half with the vanilla and chocolate servings. I still cooled it, hoping it would thicken up, and ate a vanilla serving the next day. Even though it was soupy- I absolutely loved the flavor and knew I had to give the recipe another shot. I tried the chocolate variety before dumping the rest and the flavor just blew me away. I had no idea rice pudding could be so yummy with added flavors. 

Chocolate & Vanilla Rice Soup!

Fast forward a few days later, the P's & Q's were up and I was happy to see I wasn't the only one with rice soup. It was so cool to see that Dorie keeps up with the recipes and I was so grateful for her recipe correction and gave the recipe another shot. This time I only made chocolate rice pudding and after 50 minutes, I was ready to eat the rice pudding hot. It was killing me to wait the 6 hours for it to chill- I'm glad I went out to see James Bond to get away from the temptation!

This is so yummy and just so perfect and just so perfectly easy to make (and clean as long as the milk doesn't boil over by accident. whoops!). Even my husband enjoyed it and he is no fan of rice pudding. Deelish!

Merci Beaucoup to Isabelle of Les Gourmandises d'Isa for such an excellent choice this week!

Donkeys for Tim

Donkeys for Tim! 

These were made with Martha's butter cookie recipe & my very first attempt at royal icing! This cookie is looking a little damaged after being attacked by wax paper. They were even tastier the next day!

TWD: Strawberry-Rhubarb Rugelach

Sorry about the late posting! I got sidetracked with the hoopla of election day!

I was soooo excited about this recipe- I absolutely love rugelach. There is a Jewish deli/bakery near us that makes delicious rugelach (I adore raspberry & apricot), so I couldn't wait to give this recipe a try to see how my rugelach would match up. As it turns out, my rugelach turned out to be very ugly but still tasty :-)

I made my rugelach with Strawberry-Rhubarb preserves made by the monks at St. Joseph's Abbey. Given it was preserves, it was a little trickier to work with after being heated but it was worth the shot. Next time I will definitely stick with jam- I found trying to brush the filling onto the dough was causing the dough to tear. As it is, dough and I have a love-hate relationship.

For this recipe I omitted the currants & nuts and just left it with the preserves & chocolate chips. I found the chips to be a little overpowering so the next time I will use even less. I am used to eating my rugelach with only the filling which is why I left out the other ingredients.

As far as the decorating sugar goes, I had red & green sugar left from Christmas cookies so I used the red sugar. It certainly didn't add to the beauty of my rugelach but worked out all the same :-)