Tasty Tuesday–Festive Feasts and Holiday Baking

Time for a last look back at the festive feasting season!

We started Thanksgiving week by baking…Christmas Funfetti cupcakes? There’s never a bad time for Funfetti!

Of course, the main attraction Thanksgiving week was the turkey dinner:

And seven pies!

We celebrated Nikolaustag with chicken Döner Kebab and gingerbread tiramisu:

The next special dinner was a week later, for Santa Lucia Day, featuring potato pancakes and kielbasa, with cranberry fluff for dessert…and let’s not forget the lussekattes for breakfast!

We had a gingerbread layer cake filled with gingerbread mousse and frosted with molasses cream cheese frosting on Christmas Eve:

And our favorite cherry coffee cake for breakfast on Christmas Day:

But the best meal of the year is the Christmas Day pick-out dinner!

For our “fancy” Christmas dinner, we had bolognese, breaded artichokes, and fresh baked Italian bread:

In keeping with the Italian theme, we had cannoli for dessert:

On New Year’s Eve, we had black bean soup and corn bread:

And our traditional hot chocolate bar, of course!

Our New Year’s Day dinner was enjoyed a day late…I made pork medallions and spaetzle:

And we had a Glühwein-Kuchen for dessert:

We also had a special “Lord of the Rings Day” celebration (on Tolkien’s birthday!), featuring one of the fanciest chicken recipes I make, and “Westfarthing Fairings” from the Recipes from the World of Tolkien cookbook:

For the last feast of the season, Ryan’s birthday dinner, (which also happens to be Epiphany), we had fry bread and chili:

And Boston Cream Pie for dessert:

We did lots of other baking along the way, including a pair of Italian Christmas cookies for Christmas school:

And all of our favorite fancy Christmas cookies…chocolate crinkles, linzer augen, chocolate peppermint, raspberry almond thumbprints, peppermint meltaways, and fig thumbprints:

With the addition of a few of the pudding cookies Bunny made, they created a beautiful Bunter Teller!

For our New Year’s Eve hot chocolate bar, we baked two kinds of hot chocolate cookies:

In addition to the Christmas cracker candy I usually make, we also tried a new recipe that had sliced almonds on top:

And on the last day of Christmas, we baked and decorated sugar and gingerbread cookies:

I made a couple of bonus pies along the way, too:

And a bevy of festive drinks, including standards like egg nog and wassail, and some frappe kits from Aldi:

And just as we made a special dessert at the beginning of Thanksgiving week, we ended Epiphany week with a carrot cake:

I think that’s it for festive feasts and holiday baking…I’m ready to close the Markel bakery for a bit!

The Final Teenager

Nine years (plus a few days) after celebrating our family’s first teenager, we are now celebrating our last…today is Chickadee’s 13th birthday! We had a fun day opening presents, watching movies, and celebrating the birthday girl!

For lunch, I made Chickadee’s favorite roast beef sandwiches, and we also had taro milk tea with boba:

Chickadee was really hoping our cherry tree would bloom in time for her birthday, and while it’s not at peak bloom quite yet, it has enough flowers to make her happy!

She requested taquitos for her birthday dinner, which is not something I actually know how to make from scratch, but fortunately she likes the frozen ones from the store! I also made “Midnight Magic Punch” from Entertaining with Disney.

And for dessert, a Funfetti cookie cake:

I’ll leave you with this quote from Fuller House, which is just as true today as it was when I shared it nine years ago, with the added knowledge that this really is the baby of the family we’re celebrating this time around:

“I can’t believe my baby is officially a teenager…everything is going to change…I’m the mother of a teenager!”

Tasty Tuesday–Festive Feasts and Holiday Baking, 2023 Edition

It’s finally time for a look back at all of the Festive Feasts we enjoyed over the holiday season, and all the baking we did!

Let’s start with Thanksgiving, which was our traditional turkey dinner with the addition of some delicious roasted fennel this year:

And a record-tying nine pies!

Our next big holiday was Nikolaustag, and it’s become a tradition for us to enjoy Döner kebab on that day (or, as was the case this time, several days later, once Bunny got home from college). We also had a gingerbread-based dessert as has become our custom…this time, I made gingerbread bars with a cream cheese frosting that were amazing!

On Santa Lucia Day, we enjoyed lussekattes for breakfast, and potato pancakes with smoked salmon and Kielbasa for dinner (a day early), plus an cranberry-orange layer cake with rosemary for dessert:

On Christmas Eve, we had a peppermint chip cake after church:

And coffee cake for breakfast on Christmas morning:

On Christmas Day, we had the best dinner of the year, the “pick out dinner.”

And then things got kind of messed up because I hurt my back. We postponed the fancy Christmas dinner we were supposed to have on the 27th, but we did manage to have our annual hot chocolate bar on New Year’s Eve:

And I also postponed the (different) fancy dinner we were supposed to have on New Year’s Day, but I did manage to make a gingerbread layer cake with molasses mousse filling and cinnamon whipped cream frosting, garnished with sugared cranberries:

On Ryan’s birthday (which was also Epiphany), I finally made the tenderloin that was supposed to be the star of our fancy Christmas dinner, plus s’mores pie for dessert:

Yesterday, I finally got around to the turkey dinner we were supposed to have on New Year’s Day. We also tried a new recipe for replica Starbucks’ cranberry bliss bars for dessert. I haven’t had the original, but Bunny tells me these are even better, because they don’t have that mass-produced flavor!

Before my back injury, we spent a few days baking our favorite Christmas cookies (and I put together a Bunter Teller!):

And we did eventually get around to the sugar cookies (not the gingerbread, though…we just ran out of time, but at least we had lots of other gingerbread desserts!):

I made kinderpunsch, wassail several times (not pictured), and eggnog over the course of the holiday weeks:

And then there were lots of other festive treats spread through the holiday season, from the weekend before Thanksgiving when we made soft pumpkin chocolate chip cookies to the Valentine’s Day Funfetti Bunny made for us before she went back to school (and also my first attempt at Dampfnudeln, which were amazing!):

By my count, we ended up short one fancy meal, because normally the tenderloin wouldn’t have been available for Ryan’s birthday dinner. We were also short the gingerbread cookies and the cannoli that I had hoped to make for New Year’s Day, since I simply didn’t have the strength or energy to do much the whole week between Christmas and New Year’s. It certainly wasn’t my best effort at holiday food, but at least I hit all the highlights, right?

Tasty Tuesday–Oreo Funfetti

I found a new variety of Funfetti, and this kind doesn’t even involve sprinkles…instead, it has Oreo crumbles!

Monster Funfetti

I’m a sucker for any type of Funfetti, and when I saw this adorable variety complete with eyeballs for Halloween, I knew we had to try it!

Wordless Wednesday

Thirteen!

Today is Moose’s 13th birthday!!! Yes, we now have three teenagers in the house!

He starts school a little later this year than he has in previous years, so he had plenty of time to open his gifts this morning. The humor in him receiving a Lego City hospital from us (which I purchased months ago) was not lost on me, considering the events of the last week.

Things were even more fortuitous than that, though. He told me a few weeks ago that he wanted a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. He didn’t require a cake with a special shape (that would require fancy frosting), or complicated fillings or anything. So it was an easy cake to make, even with a broken ankle, and it looked really fun thanks to the Funfetti frosting! As always for a 13th birthday, I bought candles that spell out “Happy Birthday” because there are exactly 13 letters in the saying:

It was a more low-key birthday than we usually have around here (well, except for the unexpected snow showers, which he was very excited about…I don’t think he’s ever had birthday snow before!), but he didn’t seem to mind, and I was just happy to be able to celebrate with him!

Tasty Tuesday–Funfetti!

You know it’s a HOLIDAY at our house when Pillsbury Funfetti cupcakes arrive on the scene. Even though I do a lot of our baking from scratch, there’s something special about a Funfetti cake with brightly colored frosting and more Funfetti sprinkled on top! I think we’ve now tried all the seasonal varieties…Valentine’s, Spring, Halloween, Stars & Stripes, and the ubiquitous Holiday.

In addition to the seasonal varieties, I’ve made at least one of the other colorful varieties. What I’m really waiting for, though, is the day when they might make “Lucky” Funfetti with bright green frosting and shamrock sprinkles!

Valentine’s Day Dinner

I have done fancy Valentine’s Day dinners in the past, but this year, I decided to do something fun. Make-your-own pizzas is always a big hit around here…this year, I found pizza bagels to use as the base for our dinner, and they were amazing! We also had a nice selection of toppings…two cheeses (mozzarella and Provel), mini pepperoni, green onions, mushrooms, and olives. Add some festively colored strawberry Crush, and Valentine’s Day Funfetti cupcakes for dessert, and I think we had a very nice family feast!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

A Feast for the Fourth

Happy Fourth of July!

This year, I decided to take a break from our standard Independence Day dinner of braised beef brisket, and instead went with a Dr. Pepper inspired meal. We had pulled pork in a chipotle Dr. Pepper sauce and topped with a spicy slaw, corn on the cob, baked beans, kettle chips, watermelon, and our favorite cherry Jell-O made with Dr. Pepper instead of Coca-Cola. We also had two special treats…red, white, and blue Rice Krispie treats with lunch, and my favorite Stars and Stripes Funfetti for dessert, complete with sparkler candles!