Monday, November 26, 2012

It's Christmas Cookie Time Again!

Can you believe that it's time to bake Christmas Cookies again?

The 2014 Domestic Diva Mystery takes place at Christmas and it involves a cookie swap. So I'm looking for your favorite Christmas cookies to include in the book! No kidding. If you've always wanted to see your name in a book, this is your chance.

Preference will be given to favorite cookie recipes handed down in your family. If there's a story that goes along with the cookies, I'd love to hear it!

All you have to do to enter is send your Christmas cookie recipe to me at Krista at KristaDavis dot com. If it came from a cookbook, please include the title and the author. If it came from the Internet, please provide a link.

I'll be doing the baking. An impartial panel of my family and friends will be doing the tasting! Good luck, everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. At my house, there were two new and different, for us anyway, dishes on the table. Avery Aames asked for a sweet potato recipe yesterday, so I'm happy to oblige with this recipe that was very popular with my guests.

It all started when I heard that Southern Living was making stripes on their sweet potatoes by alternating rows of crushed gingersnaps with marshmallows. That sounded fabulous to me. I couldn't find their recipe on-line, though, so I cobbled this together using one of their other recipes.

I used a baking dish that matches my china, hence the oddball size. I think an 8x8 baking dish would work fine. If you need more, double the recipe.

I also made this a day ahead of time, and baked it on Thanksgiving Day, a feature that I think is so important when there are a lot of dishes to be made.


Sweet Potatoes with Gingersnaps and Marshmallows

1 10x7 baking dish

2 medium sweet potatoes
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/8 cup milk
1 egg, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
dash of salt

5-6 gingersnap cookies (I used Mi-Del)
mini marshmallows

Peel the sweet potatoes and cut into like size chunks (1 1/2 inches or so). Add water to cover, and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down so they simmer and cook until you can easily cut them with a fork.

Place in mixing bowl and cool. Add sugar, butter, and milk and beat. Add egg, vanilla, and salt and beat well to combine.

Pour into the baking dish. At this point you can bake, or refrigerate to bake the next day.

Preheat oven to 350. Sprinkle gingersnap crumbs in lines, leaving space for the mini marshmallows.

Bake 20-25 minutes. Remove from oven and let stand 10 minutes.

Place the mini marshmallows in between the lines of gingersnap crumbs. Bake 10 more minutes. Let stand for 10 minutes and serve.


12 comments:

  1. Are those my Grandmother's raspberry roll ups? I'd love for them to make it into your book. I'll send you another of her recipes too-her famous pineapple squares.

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    1. Katreader, those are indeed your grandmother's fabulous raspberry roll ups! Can't wait to see her pineapple squares recipe!

      ~ Krista

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  2. I couldn't resist two winners for yesterday's Thanksgiving disaster contest: Books go to Karen B for her frozen turkey and Nana Calhoun for her exploding oven. Email me lucyburdette at gmail dot com and I'll arrange to send them.

    And thanks to everyone for sharing your memories!

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    1. Woohoo! Congratulations to you both! Loved those stories!

      ~ Krista

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  3. I better start going through my recipes again :). I love this time of year baking cookies is always fun especially with the kids.

    Babs Book Bistro

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    1. I love this time of year, too, Babs. Can't wait to see what you submit!

      ~ Krista

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  4. My grandmother made the most delicious coconut pralines at Christmas. She never measured and no one ever recorded the recipe, so it is lost to the ages. Breaks my heart! I do remember the smell, and her standing over an cast iron pot full of boiling sugar, and then dropping spoonfuls on brown paper bags cut up and laid all across her kitchen counter. She'd warn us sternly to stay away. I'm not sure if it was for our safety (the cookies were so hot, they'd sizzle when dropped on the paper), or because she was afraid we'd eat them all on the spot!

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    1. Ramona, that's so sad. Have you tried recreating them? I love old recipes like that. I've never had coconut pralines!

      ~ Krista

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  5. Krista, this might be the perfect solution for next year's Thanksgiving "mini-disaster" for my sweet potatoes. Thanks.

    And good luck to all the cookie contestants. Can't wait to see the recipes!

    Hugs,

    Daryl aka Avery

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    1. Avery, I hope it will be the solution. Everyone loved it. In fact, one of them liked it even better cold. I'm not the biggest sweet potato fan, but even I thought it delicious!

      ~ Krista

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  6. Krista, after reading this, I did a Google search and found a Coconut Pralines recipe on the Real Cajun Recipes site. I will give it a try. Even if it's not the same, this post brought back very fond memories for me. THANK YOU!

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    1. Aww, you're so welcome. I hope the recipe you found is just like the one you remember!

      ~ Krista

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