Holiday Baking

I spent this past Sunday staying inside (9 degrees outside- I wasn't leaving) and baking. I wanted to get a care package together to send to my grandma, so I gathered all my marked holiday baked goodies recipes & spent a few hours in the kitchen. At about hour three, I remembered I was 6 months pregnant & should probably take a break. So I only made it through about half of my recipes. I'll probably make some more tomorrow.

I actually made these beauties earlier in the week.
Chocolate Chip Tea Cookies & Minty Cocoa Cookies:

I have to agree that the tea cookies were excellent, but a little rich with the chocolate drizzle.

I made this dough last week & froze half of it b/c it made too many cookies! I just pulled them out of the freezer & let them defrost for about 15 minutes. Then followed the instructions on baking.
Pecan Snowballs

I decided that these were probably not the best for a goodie bag. I placed them inside plastic Zip-locs since the powdered sugar was getting all over everything else.

I started off making the Pecan Pie Cookies. These were a huge hit on the Internet last year, I was surprised they hadn't made an appearance this year.

I made a pecan pie/tart last year for my husband. Its his favorite pie, but this year, I promised to make him molten chocolate cake. So I satisfied his pecan pie craving with these cookies.

I felt I needed to add something other than cookies, so I made Irish Cream Brownies.

I cut them into smaller bites so people weren't on chocolate overload.

And lastly, peanut butter pretzel chews. When I saw this recipe, I immediately thought of my husband. He has this thing about sweet + salty. He loves Take 5 bars & when we have fondue, he usually requests fritos or tortilla chips to dip into the chocolate. A little odd, but quite delicious.

So when I saw this recipe called for pretzels, chocolate, peanut butter & salt. I knew it would be a winner. The only difference between the recipe & my cookies is that I mixed the chocolate chips in with the dough. This was really b/c I was so flipping tired.