Festive Cooking

 Hello All!

Tonight my family is celebrating Christmas Eve as we sadly cannot be together for ACTUAL Christmas. I decided to try to contribute to the nights dinner & dessert. I got all my ideas from Pinterest - such an amazing website. So, I made three items. Amaretto soaked chocolate covered cherries, chocolate covered strawberries, and a Christmas tree platter.  

Amaretto-Soaked Chocolate Covered Cherries 

Step One: Clean cherries and cut small slit into bottom of each cherry. Leave stems on!

Step Two: Soak all cherries in container of Amaretto, make sure all cherries are submerged. I used roughly 2/3 of the bottle, as you can see. Make sure the container you choose can be sealed tightly. Shake container contents and then refrigerate for 24-48 hours.  

Step Three: You will need to start melting the white chocolate. This is the part that I messed up the first time. If you heat it too fast, it wont melt - I learnt that the hard way! I ended up just microwaving on low heat for 20 seconds intervals at a time then stirring in between.

Step Four: Remove cherries from liquid and dry as best you can. If you wish you can save the cherry/amaretto liquid mixture to use as a flavorful drink mixture.

Step Five: Simply hold cheery by the stem and dunk into melting chocolate coating entire bottom half of the cherry, leaving a bit of cherry exposed at the tip. Place on parchment paper and chill for at least an hour before serving.

These were a great hit! Make sure you warn your guests that there is still a pit inside.

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Chocolate Covered Strawberry Christmas Lights

 Step One: Melt the milk chocolate. I used a double boiler method. It worked well for this recipe.

Step Two: Cut marsh mellows into four pieces (or buy smaller marsh mellows). These are the light bulb outlets. Use small drop of warm chocolate to help marsh mellow stick to the top of the strawberry. Once all strawberries have tops, set in fridge for 5 mins to quicken drying process.

Step Three: Dunk strawberries into chocolate until completely covered.

Step Four: Use any color of sugar sprinkles you like to make the body of the bulb. Not sure what happened to mine, but the color didn't come through very well!

Step Five: Use a white icing to make the groove lines in the bulb outlets.

Optional: You can place on a plate and draw a fake electrical line going from each light to help with the Christmas light illusion. I wish I did that!

 This is the finished product. You can sort of tell they are Christmas lights. They were delicious though, I strongly recommend making some!

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Cheese Christmas Tree

This recipe was the easiest. No real skill or cooking required. I just chose out three different cheeses that I thought would be tasty and cut them into cubes. I used a Herb & Garlic Cheese Ball - which was so creamy and smooth - for the top part. The middle was double smoked Gouda, and the bottom was Jalapeno Havarti. I used baby tomatoes for "tree" trimmings. The image I saw online used some rosemary as well for color but I strongly dislike rosemary so I left it out. Cheese is always a hit at buffets!

Enjoy your Christmas Eve everyone!

D