Two Holiday Recipies

It's a baking morning! My Mothers&More chapter is having their holiday party tonight, complete with a cooky swap and Yankee swap. For the cooky swap, I tracked down a recipie from my Aunt C. just in the nick of time -- a sort of bar cooky with a sweet crust covered in chocolate, sprinkled with candy cane bits. I remember it fondly from holiday visits to her house.

Initially I thought it would be no problem to find it -- I'd just Google "candy cane chocolate cookies" and there it would be. You would think, wouldn't you? Not so. I wrote to my aunt, and she didn't have it anymore, but she was able to track down the recipie she had modified from her sister (who lives in the same state as I do, oddly). For your culinary enjoyment:

Aunt Cynthia's Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies

1 cup butter
2 cups flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla
1 (12 oz) bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips (minis melt better)
crushed peppermint sticks (use a ziploc bag and a hammer)

Cream butter and sugar, add egg yolk and vanilla. Add flour and mix until smooth. Press into greased cookie sheet to make crust.

Bake crust for 10-15 minutes at 350 F.

While crust is still hot, sprinkle with chocolate chips. As they melt, spread chocolate to cover crust. Sprinkle with candy before chocolate is cool. Cut into small squares while everything is still warm.

I should warn everyone that might read this, that the cookies are cooling as I write. I am not yet 100% sure this recipie works to produce the cookies I remember! The original recipie said to bake the crust for 20 minutes, but mine began to burn at 15. Next time I will check at 10 minutes. The original called for half as much chocolate, but that didn't seem right either. It is very important to cut while the crust is still warm, or the cookies shatter.

Since the cooky recipie called for egg yolks, and I was already planning to make another treat that called for egg whites, I decided it was fate and I ought to do both at the same time. The other treat is "Swedish Pecans," from a recipie passed around and eventually landing with me and Dave.

Jennifer's Mom's Swedish Pecans

1 lb pecan halves
3 egg whites
1-1/2 cup sugar
pinch of salt
3/4 cup butter

Toast pecans on a cookie sheet at 300 F for 10 minutes. Let the pecans cool.

Whip the egg whites until stiff. Fold in sugar (white or brown) and salt, then fold in cooled pecans.

Melt butter in a non-stick, oven-safe pan. Put the pecans in the pan, and stir to coat pecans in butter. Back in 325 oven for 30 minutes, stirring every ten minutes. While cooling, stir occasionally so they don't stick together.

Store in airtight container.

I have made these half a dozen times, and I really like them. The only modifications I made to the recipie were as follows: (1) I increased the amounts to account for a 1 lb bag of pecans (that's how they're sold in my local store), and (2) I tried brown sugar instead of white, and it was good.

This particular batch of Swedish Pecans is destined to be part of my Secret Santa gift in my "September 99 Mommys" group. I'm also crocheting some snowflakes, and making a quilted snow-flake theme table runner/door decoration.

In other news, I'm definitely feeling Mr./Miss Baby moving around on a regular basis. I am so looking forward to my big ultrasound (a week from today). I hope that we will discover the gender, so I can be more accurate. I find myself tending to use male pronouns.... is it because I only have boys, or because this one is a boy too? Who knows :).