Happy Birthday, Jesus!

The Light of the world

Merry Christmas!

Missing my grandparents and my husband’s mom, especially today. We decided to have memorial ornaments made this year through www.personalcreations.com. We also gave these as Christmas gifts to my mom and dad. 

To send you some cheer and smiles today, the first pic below shows you the cookies we made for Santa on Christmas Eve. The second pic shows the lucky cookies my daughter picked out for Santa. Our elf, Snowflake, and his fearless buddies, Sparkles (reindeer) and Spirit (St. Bernard) awaited Santa’s visit so they could return to the North Pole with him. We had to lecture them about not eating Santa’s cookies 😉

What a beautiful sight to behold this morning! Let heaven and nature sing!

Christmas baking

Can you believe there are less than 20 days until Christmas? During this time of year, I try to pace myself with all of the Christmas activities and to do lists in order to enjoy this time of good cheer. It can get hectic quickly. 

Today, I decided to try a new Christmas cookie recipe: Kris Kringle’s Christmas cookies. They are delish! I found the recipe at www.kimscravings.com through Pinterest. The recipe was super easy, and I substituted Splenda-brown sugar blend for cane sugar. This cookie has white chocolate chips and dried cranberries, is light, and is just the right sweetness. I boxed up several to give as gifts to family and friends.

Here is the recipe:
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar (or 1/2 cup Splenda-brown sugar blend)
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract 
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup white chocolate morsels (I used Godiva)
1 cup dried cranberries (I used reduced sugar)

Instructions:
1. Heat oven to 375. Line a large baking sheet with Reynolds cookie baking sheets or something similar.
2. Beat butter and sugar in a large bowl with mixer until light and fluffy.
3. Blend in eggs and vanilla. Add flour, baking soda and salt. Mix well. Stir in white chocolate and cranberries. 
4. Drop rounded spoonfuls (2 tablespoons) of dough, 1 1/2 inches apart, onto baking sheets.
5. Bake for about 9 minutes. Cool on baking sheets for about 1 minute, then remove to wire racks to cool. 

I made smaller cookies, about 1 tablespoon of dough per cookie, and I cooked them 8 minutes. Carbs for the smaller size cookie with Splenda-brown sugar blend instead of sugar is about 6 grams per cookie. One batch made about 60 small cookies.

Check out www.kimscravings.com for several other yummy Christmas cookie ideas.

Enjoy the tasty treats of the Christmas season and remember that Jesus is the reason we celebrate.

Merry Christmas!