I send holiday cards... and edible gifts. It's something I've done for a few years now and it's a practice that makes me feel distinctly "adult." Each year I like to send my friends a small token of appreciation to show that I care. Also, I can make stuff. I tend to be known in my social circle as someone relatively crafty. So I do what I can to say, "hey, you're cool and I appreciate that you think I'm kinda cool too." Aside from the postage it is also relatively cheap. My mom likes to tell me, "You can pay with time. Or you can pay with money..." I choose to pay with time.

This year I made tea and cookie packets. I found a nice, stable (i.e. dried spices that keep and not rot) masala chai recipe in a book at the library. First I worked on making teabags.

MASALA CHAI SPICE MIX
2 Tbs cardamon
2 Tbs ground clove
2 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbs ginger
1 Tbs pepper

CHAI TEABAG
2 tsp quality loose leaf black tea
1/8 tsp Masala chai spice mix







What kind of cookie goes well with tea? ANY KIND OF COOKIE! (That was a trick question.) I made brown sugar pecan shortbread cookies to go with my masala chai. I thought the warmth of the spices would go well with the carmel-esque undertones of the brown sugar. Also, who doesn't like pecans? It was pretty basic. Brown sugar, butter, pecans, and flour. Add cookie cutters and I had myself a decorative cookie!





Lastly, I crafted my own holiday cards. I made them using a 3-D effect (b/c 3-D is the new thing) and some twine for texture.

You scream... I scream... We ALL scream... for ice cream. Gimme s'mores! (I said that last bit in my my ODB voice). I pulled out my beloved but rarely used ice cream maker recently and did a bit of a mish mash. I had some leftover cooking/baking ingredients that were taking up too much space in the kitschen. So I decided to use them up in an ice cream mash-up.

Because I made those s'more pops for my nephew's birthday I had 3/4 of a bag of marshmallows I was trying to use up and a box of graham cracker crumbs. This easily meant s'more flavored ice cream HAD to be made. Initial research showed that googling "s'more ice cream" lead to a lot of recipes with marshmallow base flavored ice creams. I like marshmallows but not that much. I prefer all ice creams to have a chocolate base! As a result I poked around a bit more and decided to do a chocolate ice cream and then add in the rest of the s'more flavors as mix-ins. The chocolate ice cream recipe I settled on came from this book. The recipe basically calls for making two mixtures and then adding them together.

I tweeked the recipe a little bit because I have a phobia of tempering eggs. So instead I used cornstarch as a thickener. I nixed the eggs and added 3 TBS of cornstarch with a bit of the milk to make a slurry.




Some s'more ice cream recipes just had you chuck in the mini marshmallows but I didn't have mini marshmallows. So I did another google search and found out you could make fluff by melting down marshmallows and adding in a bit of butter (mmm butter) and corn syrup. I know you're thinking "isn't that bad for you?" And to that I reply: It's ice cream! Who cares?!





Seriously folks... the chocolate ice cream was amazing. Such a great chocolate flavor. I will make a plain batch of chocolate ice cream any day with that recipe. So good. I liked the spatula clean and would have liked the urn too but I was afraid my tongue would stick. You can't tell from the picture but during the last 5 min. of churning I crumbled up the graham cracker crust and dropped it in there to mix throughout. While the ice cream finished I loaded up a disposable icing bag (using this method) with my homemade fluff. The final step was to transfer the churned ice cream into a freezer safe container and layering the fluff throughout. I couldn't take pictured during this process because my hands were covered in chocolate and/or fluff.

Does anyone else remember that show from Nickalodean? I loved that show... I wanted to work at a camp/ranch as a teen because of that show. Well, Hey Dude and Camp Anawanna. Now when I think about it they were both totally not PC probably. What does all this have to do with my kitschen adventures? My nephew recently turned 8 and he had a cowboy/cowgirl theme birthday party coordinated by moi!

Here's a pic of a draft of the invite...

I also made homemade trail mix to go into the swag bags.





I made some s'more pops too and wanted to used them to close up the bags someway...







For dessert I used the book Baking: New Frontiers recipe for chocolate rootbeer float bundt cake. I want this book so bad... but for now I am settling for this one recipe.