Raspberry Three Layer Jell-O

Three ingredients?  Perfect

Sounds like a good chunk of my friends out there are buried under feet and feet of snow! The funny thing is, here in Buffalo we have barely gotten a dusting! So, if you are trying to figure out what to do with 24 inches of snow, I’ll tell you what to do! Just leave it there; it will go away at some point! If that isn’t an option, then you should throw on an extra layer of clothes and head outside. That two feet of snow is just calling for you to make an army of snowmen!

Thanks for the help mom!

Today I present to you one of my favorite holiday desserts. The dessert that we brought to every holiday dinner we attended. When we asked what to bring to thanksgiving or Christmas dinner it was an easy answer, “You’re going to bring the Jell-O, right?” I’m in no way a food snob, and I’m happy to make Jell-O my fancy holiday dessert. All you need to do is dress it up with a little fruit and some colored sprinkles!

I should warn you, this is a messy dessert! Have a bleaching solution ready for your countertop, when you inevitably spill some of the mixture. I have to claim responsibility for spilling some on my aunts white carpet. What can I say, I was little and uncoordinated. I suggest serving it in bowls, rather than dishing it out onto a plate. Especially a paper plate with low edges!

I'm a kid, all over again! 

A heads up!  Starting January 1st, I'll be spending the entire month providing you with healthy (and tasty) recipes.  I thought, why not start the year off right?  Along with the healthy recipes I'll be posting helpful hints, common diet mistakes and tricky food lies.  Until then, let's eat sugar!  Two more cookie recipes this week will finish up out 2010!

Daring Bakers: Christmas Stollen

Merry Christmas or Happy Chinese food and movie day to everyone! I hope that your day is treating you well, no matter what you are up to. I’ve been enjoying my Buffalo Christmas this year, spending time with family and friends. In the spirit of spending time with the ones I love, I decided to complete my December Daring Baker’s challenge with my mom! We had a great time, made a huge mess and came out with an amazing dessert.

The 2010 December Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Penny of Sweet Sadie’s Baking. She chose to challenge the Daring Bakers’ to make Stollen. She adapted a friend’s family recipe and combined it with information from friends, techniques from Peter Reinhart’s book and Martha Stewart’s demonstration.

The original recipe called for lots of candied citrus peels and rum. Personally, I’m not really a rum person, and I didn’t feel like candying that much peel. I was feeling particularly lazy this Christmas. However I couldn’t be too lazy because this stollen has quite a few steps. I recommend getting a partner to help you with this recipe. This will help you make sure everything that needs to be added to the bread, actually is added to the bread. Also, you’ll have four different bowls of ingredients that need to be prepared before they are all combined.

We had a great time making this dessert. The best part of it was watching the bread grow. After we formed it into the wreath we watched it grow and grow (it’s alive!), then once it went into the oven it got even bigger. We decided to bring the monster to our family gathering on Christmas eve. After a little explanation the dessert started to disappear (it goes well with pizza and buffalo wings!). At the end of the evening there was some fighting over the remaining stollen, mostly because I suggested it would make an amazing French toast tomorrow morning.

Plan ahead and spend some time with someone special, baking this dessert. You’ll be enjoying it for days ahead. Make it into French toast, a bread pudding or just as toast with butter. If you coat it with sticks and sticks of butter and layers and layers of powdered sugar, then this dessert will last for weeks. (And also be buttery and delicious, BUTTER!)

Candied Orange Peels

As I cook more and more I get a little more confident with trying new things. Of course we’ve discussed the issue of cooking fears. When it comes down to it, the likelihood of killing someone with my food is pretty low. Also, the chances of me causing myself serious harm in the kitchen is equally low. Although, some days I feel like I should be wearing my safety goggles in the kitchen.

You may have seen some people already posting their December Daring Bakers Challenge pieces. I’ll be getting mine up tomorrow because it is currently rising on my parents kitchen table. The process involved in making the stolen took a few days.

Two days ago I ventured into making candy, my first time making candies! The Christmas stollen recipe calls for candied citrus peels. I don’t know if you’ve ever had store bought candied peels, but they aren’t terribly good. I think they taste like sugar, nothing citrusy about them. After a little looking around online I determined that the recipes are basically the same. Boil peels, boil sugar, boil peels in sugar. Tada! The flavor of these homemade orange peels is something akin to orange gems.

We decided to use half in the Christmas stollen and dip the other half in dark chocolate. The dark chocolate really balances the citrus and sugar. These were also really easy to make in boyfriends kitchen, because all I needed was a pot.



My mom and I decided they look like chocolate covered french fries



Merry Christmas eve everyone!  (And a merry christmas to my friends in New Zealand, Australia and Korea!)