Like most women (and probably some men), I have accumulated many recipes I have never tried. Most of them came from friends, although a few were things I saw on the internet (sometimes Hive!) and thought they looked good. This month I got in the mood to try out several such recipes. I already posted about the Speculaas.
Christmas Carrot Bread is a recipe from my late mother-in-law. I've had it for many years, but don't recall ever making it. Among other things, it calls for two 7.5 oz jars of Junior Baby Food. Guess what? That's not in the store any more! The closest I could come was a two-pack of 4-oz. plastic containers of carrot baby food. The word "junior" wasn't anywhere on any packaging. Times have changed since that recipe was given to me! So I used 8 oz. of carrot baby food and about 3/4 cup of applesauce, and it turned out just fine. My husband thought there was chocolate in it, but there is not. I made four mini-loaves, two-and-a-half of which are pictured above. (They didn't last long.)
My daughter found a different sugar cooky recipe online and baked these. She bought three tubes of colored frosting at the store, but discovered it was too sickeningly sweet to eat. So most of the cookies remained "naked." They taste fine that way, too!
Candy cane cookies are a tradition at our house, even though they are a pain in the patoot to make. We roll out a short rope of each color and then push them together a little, twist them , and then turn down one end for the crook of the cane. The dough likes to split where it is twisted, especially for the crook.
We tried adding the crushed peppermint candy before baking, but that just left a huge, sticky mess on the pan. It worked better to put it on afterwards, as shown above.
That's the extent of our holiday baking, so far. I still have a couple more ideas in mind, but will wait a few days (weeks?) before assembling more sugar-laden treats.
All photos taken on my Android phone.