Christmas Baking

Baking plus a cloudy, cold day plus candles and Christmas music makes for my kind of day.  Kids have been in and out of the kitchen- I'm glad they like to help.  Much of our baking will be used as gifts but we enjoy snacking on it, too.  We've made several pans of gingerbread lately, pretzel treats and mom's Lemon Cranberry bread.  Some of our favorite Christmas recipes are here.

We dipped soft peppermint sticks in melted chocolate.  Probably the most fun for kids and certainly easy.

Last week we made a batch of these Oatmeal Fudge bars and gave most of it away.  Today Sam helped make another batch.  Maybe I should say I helped- he did most of the work.

Have you made the Muddy Buddies recipe off of a Chex cereal box?

  Addictive.  

It calls for peanut butter so we substituted soy butter.

And as an added bonus, I received this in the mail from

Amy at Hope Is the Word.  Her blog is full of book reviews.  Love it!  She also hosts Read Aloud Thursdays, which I occasionally link up to.  This is the first blog giveaway I've won.  Thanks Amy!