Christmas Baking 2012

The photo on the left shows a sample of some of our baking and candy making this year that we used for Christmas gifts to family, friends, and a few neighbors. We truly enjoyed making all of it and the fun part was  getting to try  some new recipes that I think turned out decent.The only thing I really didn't like was the white chocolate dipped pretzels (not shown). We used Baker's white chocolate and it tasted awful. I could pick out a  strong and distinctly powered milk taste in that chocolate. Unfortunately, I didn't do a taste test of those things before packing the Christmas gift sets, because it never occurred to me that white chocolate could ever taste bad. But this stuff did-- big time! But I thank the Lord everything else was good. 

Our homemade candy and cookie list for 2012:
Wilton sugar cookie cutouts, lady fingers,chocolate samoas, chocolate spritz cookies, white chocolate dipped pretzels, cream-filled chocolate covered cherries, strawberry jelly rolls, and banana taffy.

Learning to make the cream-filled  chocolate covered cherries, the chocolate somoas, and the banana taffy was new for me this  year. About the only candy I'd ever attempted to make was the super easy boiled  chocolate oatmeal candy. I was always just a little afraid to try candy recipes. But  the level of difficulty of these treats proved to be not even close to the impossible  ordeal  I  had imagined it to be.