Seasons Eatings: Christmas Treats

The best thing to do on a snowy December day is to do some festive baking! Baking Christmas cookies is one of my absolute favorite holiday traditions. I made a couple of my favorite treats on this snowy weekend and I wanted to share them with all of my fellow Christmas lovers out there!

The first treat I decided to make this weekend were some chocolate covered pretzels! All I needed for this recipe were some pretzels (I HAD to get the Christmas shaped ones from Giant!), some chocolate melting wafers (I chose white chocolate but feel free to get creative and choose your favorite chocolate brand and flavor), and some parchment paper. It is so quick and easy to make a trip to the store for these ingredients.

All you really have to do to make these pretzels is melt the chocolate wafers and dip the pretzels in it! I recommend melting wafers instead of regular chocolate because they melt so easily and so smoothly in the microwave. When dipping the pretzels, I use a fork to take them out of the bowl so I can easily tap off the excess chocolate so I don't waste any. If you love salty and sweet like I do, this treat is definitely for you!

The most fun I had when making these pretzels was decorating them! I got out my assortment of holiday baking decorations and went to town! Another reason I use white chocolate for this recipe is so the decorations will show up nicely. I love putting the sprinkles that look like ice cubes on the stars to make them look like snowflakes. But my favorite pretzels to decorate are the trees! You can get so creative decorating the trees. I decorated one with some green sanding sugar, but the other one I got more creative and added some ornaments! I also used some leftover chocolate to drizzle some of the pretzels instead of dipping them. I thought they looked really nice that way, and it's the perfect way to get rid of the rest of your chocolate. They turned out so cute and they were soo delicious!

My all time FAVORITE cookie to make during the holiday is snickerdoodles! I am kind of a cheater though, I use a boxed mix. Shhhh, don't tell! I have actually made several home made snicker doodle recipes, but none of them taste as good as this boxed cookie mix. If you want to make some snickerdoodles, I highly recommend getting this mix! It's also really easy, all you need is some butter and an egg!

Once you mix all the ingredients together to form a dough, you roll each little dough ball in some cinnamon sugar. This mix is also really convenient because the cinnamon sugar comes right in the box! Some people just dip the top of the cookie in cinnamon sugar, but I roll it in and completely coat the cookie. I think it makes the cookie taste so much better! After rolling the cookies in the sugar, I pop them on a baking tray and into the oven they go!

I'll let you in on another secret: I always turn my snickerdoodles into blossoms! Most people use Hershey's kisses to make their blossom cookies, but my favorite blossom cookies are made with Hershey's hugs! I use both so everyone is happy and can enjoy their cookies the way they like them! When making the blossom cookies, you cant to make sure that you unwrap your kisses and/or hugs while your cookies are in the oven. As soon as they come out of the oven it's time to place the kisses and hugs in the middle of each cookie. The cinnamon sugar and chocolate combo is delicious!

I put my some snickerdoodles on top of some vanilla ice cream and enjoyed them with a glass of wine. Snickerdoodles are my favorite Christmas cookie and I know I will be making them a ton this December! Everyone in the family loves them and ate them all by the end of the night!

I do so much baking throughout the year, but December is the best time of year to get in the kitchen and bake some treats! These are just a few of my favorite things to make when Christmas is right around the corner. I would love to hear some of your favorite Christmas treats, home made or not! Thanks for reading! Seasons Eatings!!