Favorite Holiday Recipe AND Giveaway!

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We have a winner! Congratulations to #12 Lisa. She’ll be receiving a box of holiday goodies!

Thanks to all who participated and thanks for all the yummy new recipes I can’t wait to try!

My kids are spoiled by our baking week.

I thought when the big kids got to high school, the teacher gift load would be substantially reduced. I thought we didn’t really have to give high school teachers gifts (sorry but the kids don’t usually bond with them nearly as much as they did their elementary and middle school teachers).

I thought wrong.

My darling twin daughters believe differently and love to take goodie bags into their teachers. Since I’m not above the brown-nosing I let them but the gift bags are a bit smaller than the gift baskets that Scary Baby will take to school.

The girls have also added a list of friends that they MUST give gift bags to before the holiday break. Your popularity increases significantly for at least a few hours when you bring in fudge, cookies and chex mix on exam day.

PhilBillPaul takes a tray into work. We send packages to our mothers so they can make a tray for themselves and guests.

I figured since I have to make about 25 goodie bags and packages, what’s one more?

I am going to send one lucky reader an assortment of holiday goodies.

All you have to do is enter one of your favorite holiday cookie or confection recipes into the comment box below.

Then we’ll all have some great new recipes to add to our holiday collection!

Leave a recipe in the comments by Friday, Dec. 19th midnight EST. I will post the winner on Saturday and if my good intentions and priority mail don’t fail me, I will mail your box on Saturday as well!

Here are the 5 star chocolate mint cookies from allrecipes.com that I tried out last year that we all loved!

How “sweet” of my friend Leigh Anne to make them and take one her beautiful pictures for me so you could see what they look like. We seem to have a bad habit of eating the food before I ever think to take a picture of it.

Chocolate Mint Cookies

• 3/4 cup butter
• 1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons water
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• 2 eggs
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 36 chocolate mint wafer candies
  Side note: If you can find the Andes® holiday mints with light green on the outside and chocolate in the middle, they look pretty when melted and swirled on top of cookie. And if I remember correctly we used a whole mint on each cookie which really shouldn’t surprise anyone.

1. In a large pan over low heat, cook butter, sugar and water until butter is melted. Add chocolate chips and stir until partially melted. Remove from heat and continue to stir until chocolate is completely melted. Pour into a large bowl and let stand 10 minutes to cool off slightly.
2. At high speed, beat in eggs, one at a time into chocolate mixture. Reduce speed to low and add dry ingredients, beating until blended. Chill dough about 1 hour.
3. Preheat oven to 350º
4. Roll dough into balls and place on ungreased cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. Bake 8-10 minutes. While cookies are baking unwrap mints and divide each in half. When cookies are brought out of the oven, put 1/2 mint on top of each cookie. Let the mint sit for up to 5 minutes until melted, then spread the mint on top of the cookie.

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P.S. If no one enters this FIRST EVER giveaway, I will silently weep and eat all the goodies myself. Save me from that. Type a favorite recipe in the comment box right now. Please.

Tell at least one friend to enter. Two would be better. And telling three friends would be your personal Christmas gift to me. If your friends mention your name in their comment you get an extra entry for the drawing! I’m obviously not above bribing you with baked goods 😉