Sweet Treats for Christmastime

I don't do a ton of baking for holidays, but I do have a few tried-and-true recipes that are always on our list. Below are five treats I make every year without fail.

1. Knock-Off Cranberry Bliss Bars

This is a Starbucks copycat recipe and always gets rave reviews from friends and neighbors. After misplacing my mom's recipe, I pulled together a variety of online versions and combined them to make my own favorite. I always make a double batch (two 9x13 pans) on St. Lucy's Day -- I frost one for our St. Lucy's tea, and put the other unfrosted pan in the freezer to pull out and frost for Christmas.

Cake:

3/4 c. (1.5 sticks) butter, softened
1 1/4 c. light brown sugar, packed
2 eggs
1 t. ground ginger
1 1/2 t. vanilla extract
1/2 t. salt
1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 t. baking powder
3/4 c. chopped sweetened dried cranberries

6 oz. white chocolate chips

Frosting:

4 ounces softened cream cheese
1.5 c. powdered sugar
4 T. butter, softened
1 t. vanilla
1 T. orange juice

1 T. orange zest

Toppings:

1/4 c. chopped dried cranberries
1/3 c. white chocolate chips + 1 T. vegetable oil

Preheat the oven to 350. Make cake by beating the butter and brown sugar together with an electric mixer until smooth. Add the eggs, ginger, vanilla, and salt, and beat well.  Gradually mix in the flour and baking powder until smooth. Mix the chopped dried cranberries and white chocolate into the batter by hand. Pour the batter into greased 9x13 pan (I line with foil also). It will be sticky, so spread the batter evenly across the pan with a wet spatula or hands. Bake 25-30 minutes, or until lightly browned on top.  Allow to cool completely.

Mix together frosting ingredients with electric mixer. Once cake is cooled, spread frosting evenly over cake.

Sprinkle on 1/4 c. chopped dried cranberries.

Melt 1/3 c. white chocolate chips with 1T. oil on low heat in microwave, stirring frequently, until smooth. Drizzle over top of bars.

Let cake chill in the fridge for a couple hours. Cut into squares; then cut each square in half to make triangles. Store in fridge and serve at room temperature or slightly chilled.

2. Gingersnaps

This is my mom's recipe for not-too-sweet, gingery gingersnaps. I love that they stay a little soft in the middle but firm up around the edges. They freeze very well also.

2 c. flour
1 c. sugar
1/4 c. light molasses
1 egg, beaten
1 T. baking powder
1 t. ground cloves
1 t. ground cinnamon
1.5 t. ground ginger
1/4 t. salt

3/4 c. (1.5 sticks) butter, room temperature

1/3 c. sugar, for rolling

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift dry ingredients into bowl and set aside. Using mixer, cream butter with 1 c. sugar until light and fluffy. Mix in molasses and egg. Add sifted dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Cover and refrigerate dough at least one hour (can be done a day ahead). Using 1 T. per cookie, form dough into balls. Roll balls in 1/3 c. sugar. Arrange on ungreased cookie sheets, 2 inches apart. Bake until cookies are light browned around edges, about 12 minutes. Transfer to rack and cool completely; cookies will crisp as they cool.

3. Peppermint Chocolate Cookies

This is a recent addition that is now a family favorite. Unfortunately, my husband isn't a peppermint fan, so the kids and I have these all to ourselves. ;) They would make a great addition to a pretty cookie platter. Last year I dipped them in regular melted chocolate rather than white and used sprinkles rather than candy cane crumbs. Recipe here at Cooking Classy!

4. Sugar Cookies

This is our family's go-to sugar cookie recipe. We make them year round, but during Christmas, we add festive sprinkles. You could also frost them, but they are plenty sweet without. Recipe here at Life Love and Sugar. Just a couple notes: we make 1 T. balls and cook about 9 minutes, though be sure not to overbake! They do firm up when cooled. We also don't worry too much about overmixing -- we combine everything with the mixer and I can't notice any difference.

5. Last, a breakfast treat: Ina Garten's Easy Cheese Danishes

I have made these for Christmas and Easter brunch for at least a decade. Surprisingly easy and so tasty. I love sweet breakfast foods that pair well with coffee -- this is a winner! It's also simple enough that you could make it for brunch anytime, not just for the holidays. Recipe here at Food Network.

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Before I go: are you looking for some gifts for the bakers in your life, or items to add to your own Christmas list? I love my ceramic 9x11 dishes and my silicone baking mats. I also could not do without my gigantic cookie sheet -- I measured my oven and bought the biggest one that could fit. I use it almost daily! It cleans up well and is thicker than other pans I have purchased.

As my children get older and more helpful in the kitchen, I find I'm branching more each year. What are your very favorite Christmas treat recipes?  Leave a recipe or link below and I'll let my girls sort through to find some new treats to try!

A Christmas Catch-Up

Happy New Year! We had a comfortably quiet Twelve Days of Christmas and are finally getting used to the idea that we are back to lessons tomorrow after three weeks off. I didn't get quite as much done as I was hoping to over our break (nothing new there!), but I did do a lot of pre-reading and a good amount of work for the CMEC, and I finished a first-round edit of Gianna's first novel! (Well, it was the first round for me, but probably the third or fourth round for her. ;) She finished it last spring and is determined to publish it this year.)

But we're still celebrating the Christmas season here, so I thought I'd do a little catch up this evening with some snaps from our festivities over the past few weeks.

One thing I never thought we would have to do is go to Christmas Mass in a car...but such is life in California right now (and since March).

A beautiful sunrise greeted us on the way home, though!

Since we weren't getting together with family at all this Chirstmas, the kids and I did a bit of extra special baking this year. These were our three favorite cookies! (My usual gingersnaps came in a close fourth.)

But we couldn't skip our usual Christmas brunch -- the kids want that meal to be the same every year.

After breakfast, we always do a procession around the house to add all the Baby Jesus figures to their respective mangers...

The kids did a secret santa swap this year. They were most excited about giving their sibling gifts! They all pitched in to get Emilia a gift...

That big smooch was just the reaction they were hoping for!

Each year I make each of the kids an ornament. I usually tie it to one of our handicraft projects from the year. This year we have been working with raffia, so I made these raffia circles using plastic canvas coasters:

I took the advice of a friend and kept my middle kids busy prepping some "fun" foods...

A little wonky, perhaps, but everything tasted great. ;) We did appetizers and pies for dinner and it was all so good. I have been working on my pie crust this year and the holidays are a good opportunity to practice! I should have made a couple more because these didn't last long. ;)

I'll be back soon to share some favorite gifts as well as what we have been reading -- LOTS and LOTS of reading by everyone (including me) over the break!

Wishing you a happy, healthy, HOLY New Year!

So This Is the New Year

This year's Christmas card

(If you know the song my post title comes from, we might be of a similar age. I was taking a walk down musical memory lane the other night, revisiting old favorites. It has been a while!)

I'm back! Jumping back into online life now that the Twelve Days of Christmas are through and we're easing back into regular routines.

Well, not quite regular routines. My due date is today! We are doing Term 2 exams this week and then will be back on break until after our babymoon. So this is just a short (God willing!) stretch of normalcy as we play the waiting game for Baby Girl to arrive. We are looking forward to keeping busy with our exams and a little celebration at the week's end -- if I make it that far.

And so I thought I'd catch up with some end-of-the-year reflection and updates...

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It seems like everyone on social media has been doing these decade side-by-sides, so I thought I'd join in...

Christmas 2009

Christmas Morning 2019

Some things don't change: case in point, I was pregnant in both photos. Ha!

And then some things really do change, like those cherubic faces from the first photo that are now in their teens in the back row. Sob. (Not to mention those faces that are now nearing their forties, ahem. I still have a couple years left, but my husband turns 40 next month, which is a little hard to fathom!)

One with just the kids...

Christmas 2009 -- gah, those small faces kill me!

Christmas 2019 - Damien wasn't a fan of taking the photo, but we couldn't well leave him out! LOL

The crazy thing is that if I go back just five more years to 2005, we had no children...and now we have ten! God is so good.

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I kept meaning to post about our Christmas festivities on Instagram, but every time I turned on my phone, I turned it right back off again. I always end up feeling like that during the holidays! So I'll use this space to catch up a bit...

Our decorations went up as usual on Christmas Eve, when we also finished the last of the baking and wrapping. After that, we drove around to look at lights and head to Midnight Mass, with Confession and carols beforehand. One of my very favorite traditions of the year.

Christmas Day was quiet and slow. (Or as quiet and slow as life with eleven people can be.)

Our Christmas decor will stay up through January, so we all get to enjoy the bright corners and festive details for a bit longer. We are just getting started here in our celebration of the Holy Infant.

just a few of the paper snowflakes cut on winter solstice

sloyd houses joined our main nativity this year!

And a side note: every year I make an ornament for each of my kids. You can see some previous years' work here. This year, I decided to do these paper ornaments from 20/20 Press. They were surprisingly tricky! I do not usually struggle with papercrafts, but I almost gave up halfway through this project and started fresh with another plan. They ended up very pretty but I wonder how long they will last...

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2019 in Books!

I finished a nice round 30 books this year, not counting school books except for free reads that I pre-read for my older kids, and not counting Charlotte Mason-related reading (of which I probably did more this year than I have ever done before!).

My top five books of the year (with one missing because I returned it to the library)...

Dorothy Sayer's Gaudy Night - My first foray into Lord Peter Wimsey began last January during our holiday break with this one, followed up by Busman's Holiday. These mysteries ended up being a balm for me during a challenging first trimester later on this year, when I went back to start properly at the beginning and got through a handful all at once. Clever, witty, and so very readable. I have always thought of mysteries as frustratingly formulaic, but Sayers changed my mind.

Goudge's The Bird in the Tree - Is it possible for a book to be a comfort read but also to challenge me at the deepest levels? I feel like Goudge's novels are like that. On the one hand, my mind rests in the homely details, the beauty of the landscapes and the language they are described in. The stories are usually fairly predictable. And yet, Goudge's novels make me uncomfortable at times -- not because they are emotionally manipulative (which I really can't stand in books) but because they point to underlying truths I know I need to live more out more faithfully. I read this trilogy out of order; I picked up Pilgrim's Inn a few years ago, and this is technically the book before that one in the series. I am glad I finally found a copy of The Bird in the Tree and got to circle back to the beginning of the narrative. I am pacing myself with Goudge -- one per year seems to be perfect.

Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter - A tome that has been on my to-read this for a decade, although I have read a couple other of Undset's novels in recent years. This is a trilogy of fat novels, and I read them over a few months this spring and early summer. I found Kristin to be an infuriating character in so many ways, but my frustration speaks to her being realistically written.  Kristin's soul-struggles are not my own at all -- our personalities really could not be more different. And yet I learned through her struggles how to pinpoint my own selfish spots and love better, and that is saying quite a lot for a book. As the mother of a large family, I feel like I connected in a special way with this story, though I think any mother would be able to relate to Kristin's heart and the ways in which it is pulled and refined. The second two books of the series were very hard for me to read while pregnant (I am not generally an emotional person, but I am when I am pregnant or postpartum). I think I will find a second read of this series to be even more fruitful since I will be able to focus in on some of the details that, this time around, were lost in the story's overwhelming losses.

Lansing's Endurance - Biographies rarely pull me in deeply, but this year two made my top-five list! I didn't expect this to be the page-turner it ended up being. Not only was this a fantastic story, but the telling of it was wonderfully engaging. The narrative's pacing was perfect, and the author managed to draw each of the many characters with sympathy and interest. With a big cast of real-life people to portray, that isn't easy to do! I was also surprised and delighted by the humorous bits considering the seriousness of their plight. My kids ended up reading this as their Term 1 living geography selection and liked it as much as I did.

Markham's West With the Night - I finished this one a few weeks ago and am still thinking about it. It's an autobiographical memoir by Beryl Markham, best known as a first-class female aviatrix. She had a wild and unsavory adult life in many ways, but I appreciated that those indecencies did not show up at all in this book. Instead, she focuses here on her youth through early-mid adulthood, living in Africa amongst both the natives and the English colonists. Not only is her subject matter compelling, and not only does she capture both nearly-unbelievable adventure and quiet reflection on those experiences, but her writing is exquisite. I was blown away by the subtlety and power of her prose and how she is able to balance the two, each sentence carefully formed and yet not overwrought. Truly a beautiful book. I originally read this to preview for Vincent and Gianna, but I think some of the beauty of it will be best saved we get to Africa in their geography rotation a couple years from now, so they'll read it then.

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Last but not least, my "Best Nine" from over on Instagram...

2019 was challenging but very fruitful. Those two things always seem to go hand in hand. I set some goals and chose a "word of the year" last January, all with a very different view of how my life would play out. I am very happy I was wrong, though!

If all I learn, year after year, is that God knows best, I will be on the right track. Deo Gratias.

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Looking ahead:

Since this will be a baby year, I have been giving some thought to what my year should look like as I balance home and outside obligations.

I had already decided not to take on speaking engagements this winter, and probably will not do any speaking through spring as well.

But barring medical issues, I am planning to be at the CMEC Summer Retreat in July! We are working on dates and will get those out as soon as we get confirmation. This has become a standing event on my schedule and I really couldn't bear to miss it.

As always, I'll be blogging as I am able and sharing on Instagram. I am hoping to keep up with @keepingcompanycm too. I will be writing for Common Place Quarterly through the 2020 editions.

And I have been busy behind the scenes getting a jump start on the 2020-2021 curriculum for the CMEC. We'll be opening registration in just a couple months and I can't wait to see who will join us for a new year of learning together. (The CMEC was one of my biggest blessings of 2019. Truly so grateful for that community!)

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Wishing you a very happy new year! I might have time to pop in later this week with a round-up of our Christmas gifting.

But if I'm being honest, I hope that next time I pop in it will be with happy baby news. :) Would love your prayers for the week ahead.

{This and That} :: The New Year

Happy New Year! I am happy to be back to school, back to regular life, and back to this space.

I have lots of hopes and goals for 2019, and one of them is to be a bit more consistent here. There are posts I'd really love to get out of my drafts folder and into the world, so I'm hoping to carve out some energy to do that. (I am pretty sure I said the same thing last year. Ha! But I really am going to try!)

For winter, I have a couple posts almost ready to go about the religious life of the family. And I also have a simple Getting Started with Handicrafts series planned based on a bunch of questions from over on Instagram. This month, I'm planning to start with sloyd and scherenschnitte, just based on our own experiences from the past couple years learning and practicing these crafts regularly. (If you have handicrafts questions you'd like answered from someone who is learning right alongside her kids, let me know!)

Later this week, the winter edition of Keeping Company will be up! Once again, I am hoping to be back to sharing daily @keepingcompanycm after taking Advent off. And I'll be posting about the books gifted at Christmas in our home in a {What We're Reading} installment soon.

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We have been embracing the joys of the season. Our Christmas was honestly the most peaceful and fun Christmas we have had in years. I am so thankful we had twelve full days to soak it all in.

We took all of the kids to "midnight Mass," which was at the confusingly-named-but-extremely-convenient hour of 9pm. We left at 7pm to drive around the town and look at Christmas lights, then got to church early for Confession and carols before a beautiful High Mass and even the baby was enthralled, engaged, and quiet. Home and to bed with no issues!

Christmas morning was slow and full of delight. This year more than ever I was struck by how few years we may have like this left, all of us together and the children still small(ish). Childhood is so short!

There were some special spiritual graces that flooded me on Christmas Day. I felt like some long-time prayers were answered at Mass and that morning. Too special to share here, but I at least want to express the gratefulness in my heart. God is faithful.

We always process through the house to place the Baby Jesus figures in their respective creches.

We did our usual brunch and a dinner of dips, which was a huge hit. I think we have a new tradition!

I even got a nap in when gifts were open and kids were happily occupied.

The rest of our break involved books and handicrafts, and some planning time for me.

(I actually made the ornaments in the photo above before Christmas. Each year I make an ornament for each of my kids, and this year I chose sloyd stars made of gold cardstock and hung on twine. I got the idea of turning "thread winders" into ornaments from Anna over on Instagram. My kids made a bunch from thick scrapbook paper to give as gifts!)

Yesterday we did our house blessing and the Three Kings arrived to greet the Infant Jesus...except we have multiple creches with full sets of figures, so I think there were 15 kings total? :) We also had a belated Christmas party with family, which made the day extra festive.

It was a lovely holiday but I'm excited to be back to school today. Just three weeks left in Term 2! I did most of my Term 3 planning over the break, but still have a few things to work out. Hoping I get a few empty evenings to manage it all before our last term sneaks up on me!

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Do you choose a word for the year? I have for the past few years, and each time it was been fruitful in ways I didn't expect.

Here's what I wrote on Instagram as a reflection on 2018.

My "word" for last year was FOCUS. I was coming out of a postpartum fog and desperately needed to get my FOCUS back again. There are seasons during which I know I must surrender to crazy newborn days and soak up those depleted moments in the name of love; that was my last six months of 2017. But I needed 2018 to be a year of clarity and simplicity that would allow me to replenish mentally and emotionally.

I thought that would mean some difficult pruning. I was ready to take a hard look at my commitments and decide where to FOCUS my energies. I decided that this was going to be a year of saying no to a lot of things so I could say yes to single-minded school days and peace of mind.

And I did do a lot of that. I said no to good things this year. It was far less painful than I thought it would be, mostly because I could literally feel God's graces of courage and confidence. As my kids get older, I have become increasingly aware that my time is finite and my extra obligations have to be selected very carefully. I feel like I have gotten better at making those hard choices.

But at the same time, this year has been suprisingly full of unexpected opportunities. Several times I have been absolutely convinced in prayer that I should say yes to a new project, even though I couldn't see clearly where the time and energy were going to come from. And then the time and energy HAVE come, and I have walked away feeling more fulfilled and invigorated.

It turns out that practicing FOCUS doesn't always require doing less. Sometimes it means doing more, but privileging what will provide and heighten my FOCUS rather than dissipate it. (Sounds a lot like Mason's view on the habit of attention. 😉)

Sometimes it means taking on hard work in prayer, knowing that there are lessons in store for me when I give my time in faith. There are certain kinds of obligations that end up giving me back far more than they require--even when they require rather a lot.

God has taken my desire to FOCUS this year and given me tasks and relationships to FOCUS on that I didn't know I needed but that served my soul. I am still learning discernment and balance, but 2018 was a joyful surprise. ❤️

Did you choose a word? I have one I think I'm settled on for this year, but I'm still pondering...

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The first issue of Common Place Quarterly will be shipping this month and I can't wait to see it in print. They just made orders available for the second quarter, as well as an auto-subscribe option if you'd like to commit quarterly or annually. I'm putting the finishing touches on my contributions to the second issue and beginning my articles for the third...the magazine world moves so fast!

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CMiRL is back! We took a month-long Advent-Christmas break and it was so good to have that time for reflection and refreshment.

We "met" online last week to talk business and are full of fresh ideas. We're kicking it off with a peek into "back to school" in each of our homes and a bunch of survey questions for the community while we're at it.

If you're not yet following along, head over and check it out! (It's a public account, so it's available whether you are an IG user or not!)

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Some conference news...

CM West :: Retreat in Old San Juan sold out just before Christmas (hooray!), but we're still taking names for the waitlist. I'm excited to turn our attention from registration to writing talks, planning immersions, and pulling together the official schedule!

And Northern California and Central Valley friends, I will be speaking at a half-day retreat for Catholic homeschool mothers in Escalon in early February. Email me if you would like details and I will send you the flyer with more information and put you in touch with the organizers. It will be a simple and lovely opportunity to gather and share before Lent.

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That's it for now. I'd love to hear how your Christmas went and your plans for the new year. :)