Nov 17, 2008

MomDot Blog Party - Day 4


It's DAY 4 of the MomDot Blog party! Today's sponsors are: Bottlewise (Wine travel bottles! What a great idea!) and GlowMama (Tasty AND healthy beverages!)


Today's question is:

Day 4 - What is your favorite Holiday recipe, describe your Holiday table, biggest holiday cooking disaster


I'm lucky in that pretty much all of the holiday meals are hosted by OTHER people...I usually try to bring a dish, but most of the responsibility is shouldered by either my folks or my in-laws. So far, I have avoided being the bearer of bad food and we've had no major disasters in the kitchen. One of these days (when my husband's comedy career earns us that 45 room mansion!) I will probably host the festivities....and I'm sure I'll have plenty of horror stories then!!

I *do* however, deck out my house (and table) for the holidays! I am a big fan of candle arrangements, mostly because it's really easy and cheap to do something that looks very elegant. My go-to centerpieces are:
- Three or four pillar candles in varying heights, arranged on a glass plate (I've used pie plates!). I get either baby pinecones or use glass beads around the base, and I wrap part of the candles in sparkly ribbon. I get the ribbon at the dollar store.
- a glass bowl with floating candles. I have a couple of shimmery snowflake candles that I picked up in an after-season sale a couple of years ago, and I have clear glass beads that I can put in the bottom of the bowl. I have also used plain white floating candles with cranberries in the water. The produce section can actually be a great place to look for centerpiece items!

My favorite holiday recipe was always my mom's kolacky - Polish jam cookies! She used to let me press the dent into the dough and spoon the different jams in.

Kolacky (Jam cookies)

Ingredients:
2 packages cream cheese, room temperature
2 cups unsalted butter
4 cups flour
1 egg
1 egg white
various flavored jams (we used apricot, raspberry, blackberry)
Powdered sugar

Directions:

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees

- In a large bowl, mix softened cream cheese and butter until well blended. Mix in the flour 1 cup at a time. When the dough is stiff, turn onto a floured surface and knead in the remaining flour until the dough is no longer sticky. Continue to knead an additional 5 minutes after all flour has been added.

- Roll the dough out to about 1/4" thickness. cut into 3"x3" squares. Press a thumbprint dent in the middle of the square and put about a teaspoon of jam in the center of the square. Fold in two opposite corners of the square and pinch to seal. Place about 2" apart on an ugreased cookie sheet and brush with egg white.

- Bake for 15 to 17 minutes or until lightly browned. When cool, dust with powdered sugar.



5 comments:

Unknown said...

those sound really good!

The Mom Jen said...

Your blog re-do is AWESOME!

Keely said...

Oooh, those sound good. They may be my contribution to our Brunch Ladies Do Christmas Dinner, dinner.

Michelle@lifeinawhirlwind said...

Anything made with cream cheese has to be good!

Momstart said...

anything with cream cheese is great for me

 
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