Christmas goodies! Yum! I enjoy baking, but I really enjoy baking with my son at Christmas. As stated in a previous post, one of our Christmas traditions is to make Christmas goodies and take them to our neighbors and close friends.
This year we added my mom’s chocolate popcorn and homemade hot cocoa mix to our gifting. I posted on my instagram and facebook page the pictures above and was asked for the recipes and how to make the jars. I am happy to share this information for you.
White Chocolate Popcorn
Ingredients:
4 bags buttered microwave popcorn
1 1/2 bags of white chocolate chips
2 T. coconut oil
Sprinkles
Directions: (1) Pop the bags of popcorn (according to the length of time recommended for your microwave.) (2) Put popcorn into a large bowl and let cool. (3) Melt the white chocolate chips with 2 T. coconut oil. Stir together well. (4) Drizzle chocolate over popcorn and mix carefully. You do not want to mash the popcorn. Stir with more of a folding motion. (5) Spread chocolate popcorn over parchment paper on a table and sprinkle your colorful sprinkles of your choice over the popcorn. Let the chocolate set 15 minutes or until hard. (6) Gently break apart and enjoy!
Dark Chocolate Salted Carmel Pretzel Clusters
Ingredients:
1/2 bag of pretzel sticks
1 bag of caramels
2 T. sweet cream butter
1 bag of dark chocolate melting wafers
Course Sea Salt
Directions: (1) Melt caramels with butter in small pan on low heat stirring occasionally. (2) While caramel is melting, break pretzel sticks into three pieces each into a bowl. (3) Once caramel is melted, add the pretzel pieces and coat well. (4) Spray mini muffin tin with non-stick spray and add small spoonfuls of the caramel pretzels to each “pocket” of the tin. (5) Place into the refrigerator to cool for 15 minutes. (6) Melt chocolate melting wafers. (7) Dip each caramel pretzel candy into the chocolate 1/2 way. (8) Place dipped pretzel candy into a mini muffin lining to set. (9) Drizzle remaining chocolate over each candy. (10) Lightly sprinkle course sea salt over each candy. (11) Place in refrigerator to cool for 10 minutes. Enjoy! Makes approximately 30 candies.
We filled jars with homemade hot cocoa mix. The jars were a mixture of pasta sauce jars, pickle and olive jars, as well as different sized canning jars. I love repurposing things, so over the course of the past few months I would wash and save the jars we used. The cute Christmas toppers were from old Christmas cards. We traced the lids over the cards and cut out the circles. Then we attached the circles onto the lids with tape. Tie a ribbon and tada! You have cute Christmas gift jars. You can also repurpose deli meat plastic containers and lids for gifting goodies as well. Just cut out a Christmas card and tape it to the top to decorate it.
Homemade Hot Cocoa Mix
Ingredients:
1 c. Hershey’s unsweetened Cocoa
2 1/2 c. powered sugar
2 c. powered milk
2 c. powered coffee creamer
Directions:
Mix all ingredients into a bowl. Store in air tight containers. Fills 5 small glass jars.
**We also made chocolate stirrers for the hot chocolate. White chocolate peppermint (White chocolate melted with chopped Andes mints on top) and milk chocolate with mini marsh mallows. I sprayed the mini muffin tin and poured the chocolates into the tin and added either the Andes mints or marsh mellows. I then stuck a lollipop stick into them at an angle and let them set in the fridge for about 20 minutes to cool.
I hope you enjoy these recipes! We had fun making them. If you make them, post a picture on facebook or instagram and tag me @dyertyme. I would love to see what you make!
Merry Christmas!
