Caramel Christmas Gifts

We used caramels as our filler for the few Christmas gifts we handed out this year.

 Here's the 2 recipes we used:
#1-Mom's Caramels (I doubled this recipe)
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup karo syrup
1 cup whipping cream
1/4 cup of butter
 1/2 tsp. vanilla.

Add sugar, 1/2 cup of the cream and karo to heavy pan over low heat. Wash sides with hot water and don't let boil until sugar dissolves. Once sugar is dissolved turn heat up to medium. Add other half of cream slowly then add butter. Cook to 242 degrees (this temp depends on the altitude your in).  I usually do the drop water test(put a spoonful of caramel into a cup of ice water then sample it) every time to make sure it's at the consistency I like. Add vanilla. Pour into greased 9x13 pan. Once it's cooled cut into bite size pieces and wrap in wax paper.

#2-Eggnog Caramels (I got this recipe from livelaugheat.com-her recipe is a little different)

Ingredients

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
• 2 cups eggnog
• 3/4 cup light corn syrup
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp sea salt (add less if using salted butter)
• Directions
  Line an 8×8 pan with buttered or sprayed aluminum foil. In a pot, combine all ingredients and bring to a boil over high heat. Turn down heat to medium and insert candy thermometer. Continue to stir mixture until it reaches 245* F. (Mine almost cooked to 250 so do the drop test if your not sure) Then remove from heat and pour into prepared pan. Allow the mixture to cool completely for a few hours in the refrigerator. Remove mixture from the pan using the foil. Cut into 1″ squares. Store caramels in an airtight container.
  
   We made these for all the kid's teachers. 

 We wanted to give them gift cards but didn't want to just hand them a card so we filled mason jars with caramels and decorated the lid with ribbon and Christmas paper.

 We made this simple tag to attach to the jars.  We tried to incorporate the Amazon A in (a)mazing but this was as good as we could do.

 I put these together for the ladies I visit teach at church.

 I found these containers in the dollar spot at Target.  I filled the inside with caramels and attached this ornament.

I found the ornament at Hobby Lobby.

 We put these together for Jared's employees.

I found this tag here at lillunna.com

 We thought this gift card was perfect to go with the cute tag.

Have a Sweet Holiday Season!

More Christmas Pretzels

These were for our ward Christmas party.

 I did these the simple way again.  I used the Caramel Apple Wraps, chocolate and sprinkles. I also did a few trees.

 I broke the pretzel rods in half to make them go further and plus there are always so many yummy treats to sample at a church party so the smaller the better, right?

Christmas tree snacks

 It's Wyatt's turn to bring the class snack in and this is what he wanted to do, Christmas tree pretzels.

 I copied this idea from online.  All you need are pretzel rods, green candy melts, sprinkles, mini M&M's, and wax paper.

Melt your green chocolate and put it in a ziplock baggie, cut the corner, and pipe it over the pretzel in a tree shape using a zig-zag pattern.  If you are like me and need a guideline to go by just trace a basic tree shape onto a piece of paper and lay your wax paper over it before piping.  Decorate with sprinkles before it dries.  I used mini M&M's for the star and ornaments, candy cane sprinkles, and Christmas colored non-pareil sprinkles.

 We also made some fruit trees to balance out the treat since we are suppose to bring a healthy snack.

I found the trays at Dollar Tree.  I also saw this idea online.

Turkey Lurkeys!

 These little Turkeys are for Lucy's preschool Thanksgiving party.

 Note to self: buy Candy Corn when it's on sale after Halloween because you will search all over town trying to find some to make turkey feathers with. I finally found some at CVS.

 To make these little guys I first took apart the Nutter Butter cookie and added melted white almond bark to the top half.  Then I added 6 candy corns and put the cookie back together.  Make sure there is some chocolate showing before putting it back together since this is what will "glue" it back.  Then using a toothpick and chocolate I added edible eyes (Wal-Mart,) a nose (Starburst sliced into a triangle-I was able to get 3 or 4 out of each one) and a snood or as I call it the red thing that hangs with red chocolate.

This is how we brought them to school. Happy Thanksgiving little gobblers!

Treats for the Fireman

 Wyatt had a field trip today at the fire station and his teacher asked us all to bring treats and cards for them as a thank you.  We decided to make patriotic caramel pretzels the easy way using pre-made caramel.  My friend Patti and I used these caramel apple wraps years ago to make pretzels for a baby shower and I totally forgot about how easy they are.  This is what you need to make the pretzels:pretzel rods, caramel apple wraps, chocolate and sprinkles.

 There are 5 caramel apple wraps per package and I was able to get about 6 pretzels per wrap.  You could make it thinner and wrap more but I didn't need that many and I like more caramel.

 I stocked up on these trays at Hobby Lobby when they were on clearance after the 4th of July since I seem to do a lot of patriotic treats outside of July.

 I used my big 14x24 cellophane bags to put the tray in and tied it up with a bow and card.

 We seem to have a tradition in our family that if you go on a field trip to the fire station we make a fire truck treat for the class.  Usually we make cupcakes and top it with a chocolate fire truck but Wyatt wanted to make these chocolate fire truck suckers instead.  They used more chocolate but I didn't have to bake anything and I could do them a few days ahead.  Score!

Thank you firemen for all that you do for our communities! We appreciate your sacrifices!

Love is Sweet!

 My cousin Darcey got married today in Utah and asked that my sister, sister-in-law, and I all help with her sweets table.  We weren't sure exactly what kind of space we would be dealing with until the morning before the wedding so things turned out different than we were expecting but the bride was happy.

This was her yummy spread! Aren't her colors so fun!

 I love candy buffets and at a wedding, why that's even better! This was the favorite thing even for many of the adults. I loved her jars and all the yummy treats she used.  From the back row she had Twizzlers, Jordan Almonds, jelly bellies, Gum balls, gummy frogs, (front row-) dum-dums, Starbursts (reds,) chocolate red hearts, Reese's, and Tootsie Frootie candy.  Seriously amazing!

Bree, Dee, my mom, dad and I busted out these 100+ pretzels to add to the sweet table.

 We used my moms caramel recipe to wrap around the pretzels after it was cooled off.
Caramel recipe:1 cup sugar, 3/4 cup karo syrup, 1 cup whipping cream, 1/4 cup of butter, and 1/2 tsp. vanilla.

Add sugar, 1/2 cup of the cream and karo to heavy pan over low heat. Wash sides with hot water and don't let boil until sugar dissolves. Once sugar is dissolved turn heat up to medium. Add other half of cream slowly then add butter. Cook to 242 degrees. Add vanilla. Pour into greased 9x13 pan.

 Dee made all the caramel which was 6 batches and I think we ate 1 maybe 2 whole batches the few days I was there.  It's so yummy! We tend to do this whenever we get together for a wedding.  The last time we turned our insides into caramel was for my sisters wedding.  It was during Christmas time and Dee was making caramel to give away and we overcooked it which was my fault.  It was too hard to give out but we couldn't throw it away plus we actually liked it that way so we ate the entire 3 batches during that crazy time.  What a fun memory!

 After we wrapped the caramel around each pretzel we covered them in white almond bark, or green, pink, or purple candy melts.  We covered some in sprinkles but drizzled most of them. I love all these colors! Thanks for the memories family!! It was super fun being with you this weekend.

This was her cute wedding cake! I was shocked that the cake lady decided last minute to not add the purple because it didn't go with the pink and green so she decided to add orange instead.  WOW, are you kidding me? Good thing it still looked fabulous and I don't think anyone noticed it.

Soccer Cookie Cake

 Today was Wyatt's last soccer game and we made this cookie cake for the after party.

Here's the recipe:
 • 1 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour maybe less
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 ½ cups chocolate chips (I used a mixture of butterscotch, white, and milk chocolate)
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
Directions
1. In large bowl, beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well.
2. Gradually add flour, salt, and baking soda, beating until well blended. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts.
3. Spread in greased 16 inch round pizza pan. Leave 1 ½ inch border to allow for spreading. Bake at 350 degrees maybe a little less for 15 to 20 minutes. Cool cookie in pan on a cooling rack. Decorate as desired.

To make the soccer ball I traced a big circle lid using black frosting onto the center of the cookie and filled it in with a soccer design beginning with the black pentagon shape.  Don't look to close at my shapes but you get the idea.

 This was what our team got Coach for his appreciation gift this season.  We try to always do movie tickets because that's what he and his wife love to do. We made it a little more simple this time: movie tickets and Root Beer.

I found a tag similar to this online and tried to copied it.  Mine is of course not as cute but it was fun to do.

YW Night in Excellence with the Stars

 Michele headed up our YW night in Excellence this year and she chose a cute star theme. We tried keeping everything yellow/gold.

 She let me make these star cake bites. I used my star/heart cake pop maker to make the star shape cakes.  I have a really small star cookie cutter (Hobby Lobby) that I used to cut the center out on half of them. I piped yellow frosting on one side of a full star, topped it with the holey star, added sprinkles, and piped a small star around the top.  I don't love how they turned out maybe because it was so much yellow but the girls like how they tasted.

 These were the centers of the cakes that I couldn't throw away.

 Food table-look at all the yellow foods.

 Michele made these yummy lemon cupcakes.  I love the star bowls (from Dollar Tree) that she put lemon heads and caramel corn in. She also did a yummy cheese platter.

 On this side of the table were lemon bars, deviled eggs, chips with a yummy cheese dip, pineapple, and lemon cookies.  I think we just about covered all foods that are yellow.

 This was our decor for the evening!

Michele and I cut out these stars with each of our young women names on them and added glitter.