Goodies and Pinterest

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is cooking and baking Christmas goodies with my mom.  It's a LOT of fun. We turn on Christmas music, giggle, do a lot of taste testing and enjoy each others company.

This year, we decided to try a Pinterest idea.  Here's what happened.
We decided to try this pretzel Hershey Kiss thing...looked easy enough right?

At the grocery store we couldn't find the striped kisses. I think they're called Hugs.  We finally found one bag. Then we just decided to get a bag of the regular kisses and another of the yummy caramel.  We found the red and green M&M's easily.

On our way back to my house, we took a little detour and drove by some houses decked out with some pretty fantastic lights in my neighborhood.

Back to the chocolate.....The directions were fairly easy. Place a Kiss on the pretzel then melt in the oven. For the final touch, press an M&M on top.

For some reason, I thought using this pizza pan would be a good idea.  We discovered some kisses melted better than others.  The Hugs did better and the milk chocolate pretty much kept their shape until you pressed the m&m into it.  As did the caramel ones.  But those cracked and were not pretty at all.  I like the way the Hugs look with the stripes best.

 

Here's why the pizza pan with HOLES wasn't a good idea! The chocolate melted through the holes and made the pretzels stick to the pan. Scraping them off wasn't fun and it broke them.  In my defense, I think we were just trying to be efficient and get a pan ready while another was already in the oven.  I finally got smart and used a cake pan with aluminum foil.  The foil also came in handy when we decided to put them in the fridge to cool and and allowed us to sort of peel them off.

 

Here's a batch of the caramel kisses.  They didn't turn out very pretty, but man! They sure did taste GOOD!

FINALLY!  We mastered it..sort of...and got a decent batch.  Good grief Charlie Brown! Who thought something so simple could cause so much problems!!  Mom and I just laughed and ate the ones that didn't turn out.  And let me tell you, they tasted every bit as good as the ones that did.

The finished product.  They were so yummy. But dangerous!  Small little, tasty goodies like this always are.

 

This is an easy one mom  taught me.  She just poured out a bag of chocolate chips, melted them in

the oven, the sprinkled chopped pecans over it. 

After you cool it in the fridge, just break it up into pieces.

Mom even got jazzy and used mint chips. The possibilities are pretty endless, it's super easy, goof proof and delicious!