Leftover Candy Cane Recipes

I have a lot of leftover candy canes this year so I've been searching this morning for recipes to use them up. Here are a few that sound yummy...

Candy Cane Popcorn
Candy Cane Cocoa
Peppermint Meringues
Peppermint Brittle
Candy Cane Fudge
Chocolate-Peppermint Sauce
Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies
Candy Cane Cake
Candy Cane Biscotti
Peppermint Ice Cream

Wishing you a very happy 2010!

Birdseed Ornaments

This year for our little neighborhood gifts we made birdseed ornaments and packaged them in a paper bag printed with a hand carved stamp (designed and mostly carved by B). The bags were sewn shut with red thread.


We used this recipe but after making about eight batches of these, here are some tips:

* I made a couple of batches in mini muffin tins and mini bundt pans but couldn't get them out of the pans for the life of me. I used a silicone snowflake candy mold (I have a 24-cup one) for the rest and they were much easier to remove.

* If you use a silicone mold, place it on a cookie sheet before you start filling it because it's flimsy and hard to place in the refrigerator without something underneath it.


* I used slightly less birdseed (a few tablespoons is all) than the recipe called for because the first batch was very dry and crumbly. When you take them out of the molds there might be some cloudy gelatin on the fronts but it dries clear and shiny.

* I put twine hangers in the middle of the ornaments by filling the molds halfway full, placing the loop of twine in the middle (a long piece that goes to almost the other side of the mold so it won't easily slip out), and then filling it the rest of the way. The birdseed is hard to compress but it helps to use the back of a spoon. Hold the back of the spoon over the area with the twine loop so you don't pull the loop out as you remove your fingers.

{B's hand carved "Sweet Tweets" and bird stamps}

{the finished birdseed ornaments}

Advent Calendar Goodies

We just posted an advent calendar in the Iron Timber shop. It is a handmade red pegboard with drawstring bags printed with numbers from antique rubber stamps.

Here are the treats I'm going to put in our advent calendar. I tried to think of a few things that are holiday traditions for our family and things that could be used year after year.

12 A scroll with the Christmas story from the scriptures and a small candle. We'll read the story by candlelight to remind us to keep the Christ in Christmas.

11 First clue for a treasure hunt to find new ornaments for the year. This year I'm going to start marking the new ornaments with the kids' names and year. I haven't done that in the past and I really wish I would have.

10 A bag of spices (cinnamon and cloves) for making apple cider.

9 A single Christmas light bulb. This will be our reminder to take a drive around town to look at the Christmas lights.

8 Mini candy canes with $1 wrapped around the stems and tied with a ribbon. My great-grandma used to give all of her great-grandkids one of these each Christmas and that is one of my favorite holiday memories.

7 A tiny jar of red and green sprinkles. My friend gave us a big jar one year with a note to use the sprinkles on everything from cookies to ice cream to oatmeal.

6 Glass hearts--one for each person in our family. Each person can do a service for someone else in the family and leave the glass heart behind (for instance, make someone else's bed and leave a glass heart on the pillow).

5 A piece from a board game to play together that night. Might be a new game or something we already have.

4 A harmonica. My grandpa always used to play us Christmas songs on the harmonica.

3 Chocolate!

2 A miniature apple. Make Grandma C's recipe for baked apple pudding.

1 Christmas Eve! An antique skeleton key hanging from a silver ribbon. This will be hung on our front door knob for Santa to use to get in our house since we don't have a chimney.