the wrapping party that wasn't

Phooey on you, weather. 

I grew up in Iowa where blizzards on Halloween weren't abnormal. But now that I live farther south, I've gotten soft. I expect the roads to be passable, snow to be minimal, and Decembers to be barely chilly. 

Not so this weekend.

holiday gift idea

Our garden didn't really do like we'd hoped this year. 

Also, I say that every year.

Christmas Funfetti Cake Batter Truffles

My friend Sarah and I recently discovered that we have been baking Christmas cookies together every year for four years. We started out baking for an afternoon in my dinky kitchen in my little apartment in St. Louis, and now we've graduated to her spending the night and a Saturday baking away in the farmhouse kitchen.



She's a baking guru. As in, she made two cheesecakes while I . . . sat and was largely unhelpful. 

(My farmer also pointed out that the filaments aren't touching on my light bulb cookies, thus rendering them defunct. This is how you know you're married to a handy man.) 

Sarah also whipped up these Christmas Funfetti Cake Batter Truffles from Lauren's Latest, which were so tasty that I had to hide the ones she left us in the back of the freezer so my farmer couldn't find them. 

PLUS, you can get all the ingredients at Aldi, which is a big deal for those of us who don't like making nine stops at fourteen different grocery stores while out shopping. #thestruggleisreal PLUS PLUS, they have milk in them so . . . dairy!

This Christmas, channel your inner Sarah, hollow out a half hour to mix these truffles up, and pop these bad boys in the fridge/freezer for enjoying with your friends and family. 

If my mouth wasn't full of one right now, I'd tell you that you won't be sorry you made these. But . . . since I'm licking sprinkles off my fingers, you're just going to have to trust me on this one.

Deal? 

Christmas Funfetti Cake Batter Truffles

1 cup white cake mix
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon Christmas sprinkles + more for decoration
1 1/2 cups white chocolate chips or vanilla almond bark

DIRECTIONS:

In a large bowl, whisk cake mix, flour and sugar. Stir in melted butter, vanilla, milk and sprinkles. Mixture should be moist and be able to hold its shape easily when formed. Using a cookie scoop, form mixture into even balls and refrigerate 20-30 minutes.

In the mean time, melt chocolate in a double boiler or slowly in the microwave. Using a fork, drop one of the cake batter truffles into the chocolate and roll around to coat. Tap off the excess gently and transfer to cookie sheet lined with wax paper. Top with more sprinkles, if desired.

thanksgiving 2015

It's never good to step on the scale after Thanksgiving. It's an especially bad idea when you're pregnant. Nothing good can come of it. Just don't. Or don't look. Or live in denial. You have options. 

That's really the only downside to Thanksgiving. The upsides are countless. You get to spend time with your family, discussing everything from manure management plans to how to build life together in churches. Because that's what happens when you've got a pastor and farmers in the family. 

You can also wear princess dresses and help your grandma make the cranberries, but I really only recommend that if you're a 3-4-year-old girl. 

You can peel potatoes because you're the mashed potato queen . . . Ok, so the KitchenAid is the mashed potato queen but somebody has to show that thing who's boss. It also helps to have cute nephews nearby to pick up any scraps you may drop. 

You can eat until you feel like you're about to pass out. Or you can't breathe, which is really just like any other day if you're pregnant. Juicy Alton Brown turkey, lumpless mashed potatoes with sour cream and butter, homemade rolls, sweet potato bread pudding, strawberry pretzel salad . . . 

You can order up a pie flight: gooseberry, raisin cream, caramel apple and pumpkin. Or just eat a piece every hour on the hour through the entire Thanksgiving weekend. 

Or you can try to sample them before the meal even starts and while the girls aren't looking. It must be a guy thing. 

And when it's all over, you can go right back to the beginning: spending time with your family, talking about the things that matter and maybe, just maybe, sneaking a bite of turkey off the bone when nobody's looking before remembering that the scale knows . . . especially when you're pregnant. 

bread inside of a cake

Being the baby of the family has its advantages. Your parents aren't as strict with you as they were with your siblings. Your bedtime is a little more flexible. 

And you don't have to cook the Thanksgiving turkey, no matter what age you are, because you're the baby, and babies just don't know how to do that very important adult-ish stuff.

Clearly.

What we CAN handle, however, is bread. 

Or cake. Or bread cake. Or brake. Or ca-ad. Kind of like turducken but more carby.

The instructions are super difficult, so you have to follow closely.

(1) Bake pumpkin bread. (2) Cut out said bread in the shape of pumpkin. (3) Bake the shapes inside a pound cake. (4) Eat. 

But don't be deterred. It's totally do-able. Maybe even more do-able than roasting a turkey. 

Plus, you get to load up on the scraps of the bread that don't get cut into the shape of pumpkins. 

I also cut turkey legs out of pumpkin bread, so I'm pretty sure that almost counts as making my own turkey, right, Mom?

Mom? 

You can use pound cake and pumpkin bread mixes or make your own from scratch. I do recommend adding a little pound cake mix to the bottom of the pan before stacking your cut-out bread inside it. 

Otherwise the bottom of your pumpkins/turkey legs get a little cut off, and if you're showing up to Thanksgiving with something as awesome as this, you can't afford one little flub-up. 

Older siblings are all over that nonsense. 

Once your bread-cake-combo-of-deliciousness has cooled, slice that beauty up and impress the turkey legs off the rest of your family. 

But mostly your older brothers and sisters. 

They can brine and roast and fry their birds. But only YOU can show up with a pumpkin inside a cake. See? Being the baby really does have its advantages!

easy holiday pear and pomegranate salsa

Let's face it: We like to eat our way through the holidays. Growing up, Christmas was just a chance to move from meal to meal to meal with church and presents and family members sandwiched in between.

On Christmas Eve, it was chili and cheese and crackers and veggie platters and cookies and fruitcake. 

On Christmas morning, it was a delicious pastry and hot chocolate. 

For Christmas brunch, it was bacon and biscuits and grits and eggs and cinnamon rolls. 

On Christmas Day evening, it was gut rot.