On the third post about Christmas, my blogger gave to me….

… pics of the kids with Santa number three -

How does he get so many presents wrapped and ready to go when he’s bouncing all over town, making these appearances?

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Marshmallow update:

If you are going to use Jello to make marshmallows, instead of plain gelatin,  for the love of Pete – GOOGLE A RECIPE THAT CALLS FOR JELLO!  They exist.  They’re out there.  They are nothing I bothered to look for before making the great pink monstrosity.  In case you were wondering?  No.  You cannot use strawberry Jello in place of the plain gelatin that Martha calls for in her recipe.  Grossest. Stuff. Ever.

Of course, Violet loved it.

Mmmm.  Red dye.

I let her lick the giant whisk from my Kitchen Aid.  She had marshmallow cream from her collar bone to her forehead.  After she got all cleaned up and dressed, she was scratching her chest, pulled down her collar, and found a chunk down on her sternum.  She looked at me, covered it back up, and said “That’s my little secret treat.  I’ll have it later.”

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A couple of years ago, my friend Becky brought me some homemade marshmallows at Christmas time.  I had never even considered such a thing, but one bite and I suddenly understood why one might go to the trouble to make them.  Holy hell – they are so far superior to store bought.  So soft.  So vanilla.  So delish.  I ate them all without telling the rest of the family that they ever existed.

Last year I scoured the internet for a recipe.  Most of them called for gelatin, which I did not have on hand.  I found one that didn’t on Allrecipes, and happily made it without reading any of the reviews.  Shockingly enough, it did not make marshmallows.   After I created the soft, pink, vanilla candy (we called it “vanilla fudge”) that in no way resembled a marshmallow, I looked them up.  They all said “What’s with this recipe?  You can’t make these without gelatin!  Don’t follow this recipe!”  Awesome.

Then this year was the Jello incident.  It was starting to feel personal, so despite the huge quantities of treats we already had in the house, I went out and bought everything I needed and finally, FINALLY, did it.  I made marshmallows.  Approximately 7,000 of them.  Jumbo size.

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This is where the picture of my biggest tupperware, plus the ones that didn’t fit in it (and are now in a gallon sized zip lock), of marshmallows should be.  But I forgot to take it.  Just picture enough marshmallows to fill your kitchen sink.  If your kitchen has a double sink.  What the hell am I going to do with all these freaking marshmallows?  We can only drink so much cocoa.

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Cookie update:

We are still making cookies.  I’m not sure why, or how many cookies we think we need, but we can’t seem to stop.

Whoa.  That’s a big handful of sprinkles.  What?  You can’t see how much he’s grabbing?  Hold on – this camera has a zoom….

Yeah.

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This could explain the cookies that come out looking like this -

Jonas loves to decorate cookies, because it’s like an all-you-can-eat candy buffet.  One handful on the cookie, one handful in the mouth.  5 m&m’s on the cookie, 7 in the mouth..

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I was taking pictures of everyone, also (foolishly) trying to decorate some cookies of my own.  What I (clearly) should have been doing was keeping my eye on the boy.  Eye on the boy.  Constant supervision.  Because if you look away for even a second, if you give him the teeniest opening, this is what you get –

Yes.  That is an entire shaker of red sugar on one cookie.  Be sure to note the pile of overspill on the table. That kid…  it’s just lucky he’s so cute.  That’s all I’m going to say about that.

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After we had frosted and sprinkled approximately seven dozen cookies, I collected my two favorites from everyone’s tray for a little photo shoot (because I’m sure that you all can’t POSSIBLY be sick of looking at pictures of cookies yet!)

Violet’s cookies.  I like that she restrained herself to only two or three toppings per cookie.  Pretty liberal hottie application there.  We used to have holly bushes, and I don’t remember there being *quite* that many berries per leaf…

Cookies by Jonas.  No restraint at all.  When you pick them up, you have to be careful that they remain absolutely level,  or 75% of the toppings slide off.  We have sprinkles in every corner of the house.

Cookies by me.  I’m looking at the careful placement of the orange sprinkles there, and I’m worried that maybe OCD is catching and Joe has finally infected me.

All the pictures I took of Joe’s cookies came out blurry.  *Somebody* wouldn’t stop bumping the table (and begging me for JUST ONE MORE cookie.  We may have an addiction problem on our hands.)  You can, however, see them here in the group shot (along with a very suspicions little hand.)  He actually cut a star stencil out of paper to do that with the sugar.  When you force him to  participate, he can really get into the whole creative crafty thing.

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My genius plan of decorating out in the living room so there would be better light for picture taking worked out pretty well. Only problem was, the little red table wasn’t big enough for all four of us, so Joe and I had to work on the floor.  No big deal, we just put our cookies on cookie sheets and decorated down there.  Right?  Wrong.

No, this cookie is not missing a couple of m&m’s.  Those are toe prints.  After a quick inspection of four little feet, we found this –

Green sugar on the toes.  I’m pretty sure any jury in town would  convict this kid (unless he used his super-cute “who, ME?” face.  Then the prosecution would be in trouble.)

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(I should also mention that in addition to your cookies potentially getting stepped on by terrorists, when you sit hunched over on the tile floor for 90 minutes decorating cookies?  You spend the rest of the day unable to completely straighten your back, and cursing your old-person body.  It wasn’t pretty.)

Along with the cookies and the marshmallows, in the past 48  hours we have also made caramels, (swoon!) and fudge, and tomorrow are planning to attempt our own candy canes.  I made hot chocolate from scratch (using grated dark chocolate and heavy cream.  Holy smokes.) and bought pie ingredients (because all of these candies and cookies don’t really matter when it comes to Christmas dinner – there still must be pie!)  Both Joe and my mother have remarked that I am the biggest sugar Nazi for 11 months out of the year, but come December I’m saying things like “Sure we can eat the gingerbread house for breakfast!”

What gingerbread house?

Cheeeeeese!

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Gingerbread neighborhood (more than one house here.  Those recipes make enough freaking dough for an entire gingerbread suburb.) details will go up on my other blog.  (What?  You’ve never heard of “sugarcraft”?) I think this one has had just about enough cookie action lately.

Tomorrow, a post that has absolutely nothing to do with cookies.  No, really.  It’s about Violet threatening Joe, and I think it’ll be pretty funny.  There will also be a picture of a fake mustache, and maybe another quote from my brother.  It’ll be a good time.  See you then.

I’ll be the one on the sugar high.