Cocoa Drop Cookies

Holiday cocoa drop cookies dipped into vanilla almond bark and sprinkled with .....Christmas sprinkles!

Bill ate one of these cookies and he LOVED the vanilla bark side!

He's my official taste tester and fellow lover of sweets. In fact, he would be happy if I dipped the WHOLE cookie in almond bark. 

However, I love the contrast between the dark chocolate of the cookie and the white of the almond bark side.

Personally, I like using almond bark in place of chocolate because it is so easy to use. 

Just pop two or three squares of almond bark and 1 tsp solid vegetable shortening into a small deep bowl and microwave in 30 second bursts and stir until the bark is melted and smooth. 

You are ready to dip cookies!

Yield: about 4 dozen cookies
Time: 1 hour chill time          8-10 minute bake time for each cookie sheet of cookies.

Ingredients

• 1 cup sugar 
• 2/3 cup salted butter, softened
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1/3 cup water
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt

Directions

• Place sugar, butter, egg, water, and vanilla into a medium size bowl and mix until blended.
• Stir in flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir until mixed well.
• Cover bowl tightly and chill in the refrigerator for about an hour.
• Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. 
• Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls about 2 inches apart on to an ungreased, or parchment paper lined cookie sheet. 
• Bake until almost no indentation remains when touched, with is about 8-10 minutes. 
• Immediately remove from the cookie sheet and cool.

Dipping the Baked Cookies

• Once the cookies are cool, melt 3-4 squares of vanilla almond and 1- 2 tsp. of solid vegetable shortening in a small, deep bowl, following the package directions. I wing it and put the ingredients in the bowl and microwave in 30 second bursts and stir in between the bursts until the almond bark and shortening are melted. 
• Dip each cookie into the bark, shake off excess bark, and add sprinkles. My method consists of pouring the sprinkles into a soup bowl and holding the dipped cookie over the bowl as I sprinkle the decorations on each cookie. This is a great job for the kids! 
• Set dipped cookies onto a parchment paper lined cookie sheet. 
• When the cookie sheet is full of dipped cookies, put the cookie sheet into the freezer for 5 minutes to set the vanilla bark.
•  Remove cookie sheet from the freezer and cookies are ready to start packaging.

Enjoy eating some homemade happiness on a plate! 

Applesauce Drop Cookies with Easy Caramel-Coffee Frosting

Christmas Applesauce Drop Cookies dressed up with a vanilla almond bark swirl and gold food spray.

My annual Christmas baking began on December 21 this year.

I just had a little trouble getting into the baking mood after making and decorating a half sheet cake for our CMA Christmas party. How about you? There always seems to be so much to do between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. 

Additionally, I made 4 dozen cutout snowmen cookies for the Christmas cookie exchange at work. I love baking, but sometimes I just need to make the baking easy on myself by making drop cookies to accompany the decorated, holiday sugar cookies. 

Yield: about 3-4 dozen cookies 

• Heaping teaspoonful of dough makes 3 dozen
• Slightly rounded teaspoonful of dough makes 4 dozen

Time: 1 hour chill time       8-10 minutes bake time

Cookie Ingredients

• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1 egg
• 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt

Caramel-Coffee Frosting  See the recipe and ingredients below

Directions

• Put brown sugar, shortening, applesauce, and egg into a medium sized bowl and mix well with a whisk, or a hand mixer.
• Add flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir by hand until blended well.

Cover and refrigerate the dough for at least 1 hour. I make the cookie dough the evening before I want to bake.

• Heat oven to 400 degrees F. 
• Measure dough out with a teaspoon and scoop out a rounded teaspoonful. Use a second spoon to aid in dropping the dough onto your cookie sheet.
• Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of dough about 2 inches onto an ungreased, or parchment lined cookie sheet.
• Bake for about 8-10 minutes, or until almost no indentation remains when you touch the cookie top. Also, cookies will harden somewhat as they cool.
• Immediately remove from the cookie sheet and cool. 

Cookie Baking Tip

Lining a cookie sheet with parchment paper makes transferring hot cookies VERY easy. 

You just slide the entire sheet of cookies out of the pan and onto the cooling rack. 

No trying to slide a spatula under hot cookies! Yeah!

Caramel-Coffee Frosting

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup salted butter 
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tsp. caramel flavoring
• 2 Tablespoons cold coffee

Directions

• Heat butter in a 1.5 quart sauce pan over low heat. 
• Remove pan from the heat when the butter is melted.
• Stir in powdered sugar and caramel flavoring
• Stir in coffee until frosting is smooth and spreadable
• Cover tightly until ready to use the frosting

This frosting dries quite quickly, so keep a damp paper towel over the frosting and cover tightly if you need to stop frosting your cooled cookies. 

Perfect Drop Cookies Every Time Tips

1. Keep the cookie dough refrigerated in between batches
2. Put cold cookie dough onto a cool cookie sheet each time. Baking times are figured from the time you put a batch of cold dough onto a cool cookie sheet. 

Snowman Cookie Exchange Winner

My adorable snowman cookies won 1st in the Best Decorated category in the annual Christmas cookie exchange at work. 

Sugar Cookie recipe   Click Here  Use a 3 inch gingerbread man cookie cutter

Royal Icing recipe      Click Here  Use clear vanilla extract to get snow white icing. 

Icing Colors

• Apply the white royal icing with a butter knife and allow to dry for about 20 minutes.
• Tint a small amount of icing black with Americolor Gel Super Black.
• Tint a small amount of icing orange with 1 drop Americolor Gel Super Red, and 2 drops Americolor Gel Yellow.
• Put tinted icing into a small decorator bag. Carefully snip the very end of the bag off. Pipe onto the cookies. 

Naked Wedding Cake Cookies and Heart Cookies

. 

Yes, we wore clothes.The wedding cookies are naked, not the wedding party. 

My daughter, Cassie wanted a destination wedding in the Colorado mountains about an hour and a half from where my sis lives in Greeley, Colorado. 

Greeley, Colorado just happens to be about 800 plus miles from central Missouri. 

Cassie wanted rustic simplicity with immediate family members.

No fancy dress. 

No reception hall. 

No catered meal. 

No wedding cake. 

Rustic, simple, and outdoors was what she wanted. 

However, she did tell me I could make my sugar cookies for the simple, outdoor meal she wanted us to share.

Naked wedding cakes gave me the idea for making three tier, naked wedding cake cookies.

Graduated, square cookie cutters used to make the tiers for the wedding cake cookies.

Double heart cookie cutter for making the Mr. and Mrs. cookies.

Each square is cut in half cross-wise. This yields two wedding cake cookies.

Hot pan of baked cookies cooling for five minutes before the cookies are removed and placed onto the cooling rack.

Royal icing piped with a #5 decorating tip outlines the cookie tiers.

Royal icing piped with a #5 decorating tip outlines each heart. 

Royal icing flowers and leaves are piped on each tier for a naked wedding cake look. Blooms and leaves are made with a Wilton #16 star tip and a #67 leaf tip. 

 Each double heart cookie has a dozen blooms created with the Wilton #16 star tip and a #67 leaf tip. Script writing is done with a #5 decorating tip.

Sugar Cookie Recipe              Click Here            Note: I use 1/2 cup of salted butter

Royal Icing Recipe                  Click Here            Note: I use lemon juice instead of cream                                                                                         of tartar.

Strawberry Chocolate Squares

Corrections: www.bonhambusiness.blogspot.com

"Honey, I wish we had some cookies or something."
My answer to the hubby?
"I can make some treats."
lol...lol little did he know that I had yummy, strawberry chocolate treats in mind!

This simple easy treat can be made in less than thirty minutes. The next time you want something sweet, reach for a bag of marshmallows, sugar free strawberry jello, and some chocolate almond bark.

Strawberry Chocolate Squares
Ingredients

• 1 - 10 oz. bag of marshmallows
• 1 - 0.30 oz. pkg. of sugar-free strawberry jello
• 4 Tbsp. butter, or margarine
• 3-4 squares of chocolate almond almond bark, or about 1/4 of a 20 ounce package
• 6 cups of puffed rice cereal

Directions

• Lightly grease a rectangular, 2 quart casserole pan with vegetable shortening and set aside.
• Place 4 Tbsp. of butter in a microwaveable 3 quart bowl.
• Microwave in 30 second intervals until the butter is melted
• Empty the sugar-free jello and marshmallows into the 3 quart bowl
• Stir until the marshmallows are evenly coated with the butter and jello.
• Microwave the marshmallows for 1 minute.
• Remove from the microwave and stir for a minute
• Microwave for an additional 30 seconds
• Remove from the microwave and stir until the marshmallows are completely melted and blended with the jello.
• If necessary, microwave for an additional 15 seconds.
• Stir in the 6 cups of puffed rice cereal until the marshmallows are blended evenly with the cereal.
• Spoon the cereal mixture into the lightly greased 2 quart casserole pan.
• lightly coat your hands with vegetable shortening and press the cereal mixture into an even layer with no air pockets. 
• Set the pan of cereal treat mix aside.
• Put 3-4 squares of chocolate almond bark( about 1/4 of a 20 ounce package) into a microwaveable small bowl.
• Microwave for 1 minute and stir 
• Microwave for an additional 15 seconds and stir the chocolate bark until it is completely melted. If necessary microwave for an additional 15 seconds.
• Pour the melted chocolate bark on top of the cereal treats and spread evenly with a spoon.
• Place the pan of treats in the freezer compartment of your refrigerator for 5 minutes, or until the chocolate bark is firm.
• Slice the treats into 12 large squares, or 16 smaller squares, with a sharp knife

Your treats will still be slightly warm and soft, but this is how Bill and I LOVE to eat them. 

Enjoy your slice of homemade happiness on a plate!

Gingerbread Snowmen, Snowflakes, and Stars

Snowflake snowmen, star snowmen, and gingerbread snowmen are the theme for my 2015 Christmas gift plates. 

I have been waiting since January to create these adorable snowman cookies. 

Why January you say? In January, I saw a plate of star shaped and snowflake shaped snowman cookies on Pinterest. Seriously, I fell in love with a plate of snowman cookies.

To create my Christmas plate of cute cookies,

I made a double batch of holiday sugar cookie dough, a double batch of homemade gingerbread cookie dough, and one batch of old-fashioned royal icing that was somewhere between piping and flow consistency for decorating. Old-fashioned royal icing means I used real egg whites and lemon juice. 

At the end of my baking and decorating, I had 10 plates with 1 dozen cookies on each plate.

Plus, I made stocking stuffer snack bags for our grandchildren, nephews, and nieces. Each stocking stuffer snack bag holds one gingerbread snowman and one sugar cookie snowman.

Sallee B's Go To Recipes

Roll out sugar cookie recipe      Click Here

Gingerbread cookie recipe        Click Here

Royal icing recipe                      Click Here

Note: I did not use molasses in the gingerbread cookie recipe. As a substitute, I used butter pecan pancake syrup. The dough will be a little softer and has to be chilled at least two hours. 

The picture below shows the cookie cutters that I chose. 

Cookie cutter sizes starting at the top left: 

• 3 inch gingerbread cookie cutter
• 3 inch five point star cookie cutter
• 3 inch Christmas tree cookie cutter
• 1.5 inch snowflake cookie cutter
• 2.5 inch star cookie cutter

Decorating with Zip Top Bags

I did not use any decorator tips on this baking project. I did fill 1 pastry bag with white royal icing and two snack size, zip top bags with  orange and black royal icing. With a small pair of scissors, I snipped the end of each bag. Make sure you barely snip the corner, or tip, of each bag because if you snip too much off, the royal icing will make a gloppy, wide line. Not telling you how I know this. lol...lol

Frosting the Sugar Cookie Snowman Stars, Sugar Cookie Snowflakes, and Gingerbread Snowmen

1. Outline the cookie with white icing
2. Pipe a few lines onto the cookie, inside the outline, to partially cover it.
3. With a short, thin bladed knife, carefully spread the icing to cover the cookie inside the outline. Add more icing if necessary I used a dollar store paring knife. 
4. Let frosted cookies dry until the icing is hard. Royal icing dries FAST.
5. Use a dot of black icing to form eyes, mouth, and buttons. I used five dots for each snowman's mouth. 
6. Add an orange dot and line for the nose. Mine are vaguely triangular. I made a dot, then added a small line to shape each nose. 
7. Let dry until frosting is hard. 

Decorating the Sugar Cookie Stars and Sugar Cookie Christmas Trees

1. Pour desired sprinkles into a soup bowl
2. Outline a cookie with royal icing. Add icing lines anyplace you want sprinkles to adhere.
3. Hold the cookie over the soup bowl and drop sprinkles onto the wet icing.
4. Repeat until all of the cookies are outlined with sprinkles. 

I spread a thin coat of icing on the top of a few stars and then applied sprinkles onto the cookies. Personally, I like the sprinkle outlined cookies better than the cookies with a solid coating of sprinkles. 

Sparkling Gooey Lemon Cookies

I am from Missouri, home of the Gooey Butter Cake. 
Of course, it didn't take long for a cookie version of Gooey Butter Cake cookies to arrive on the food scene. Yellow cake mix, butter, and cream cheese make these cookies addictively good. Plus, they only use five ingredients. How sweet is that? 

Sparkling Gooey Lemon Cookies are a variation of the Gooey Butter Cake cookies. The main difference is using a lemon cake mix in place of the yellow cake mix. I LOVE these lemony, rich, and decadent cookies that are drizzled with a tangy sweet lemon frosting and a slight crunch from the sparkling white decorating sugar. As always, these cookies have been husband tested and approved. 

Yield: about 4 dozen cookies  

Preparation Time: 15 minutes to make dough and about 30 minutes to chill the dough

Ingredients
1 - 8 oz. package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup, or 1 stick of unsalted butter, softened
1.4 teaspoon vanilla
1 medium egg1/4 
1 box lemon cake mix



Directions

• Preheat oven to 375°F.
• In medium bowl, beat cream cheese and butter with spoon until well blended. 
• Stir in vanilla and egg. Add cake mix; stir until well combined 
• Chill dough for about 30 minutes, or until the dough can be handled easily
• Shape 1 level Tablespoon of dough into a ball; roll in powdered sugar to coat.
• Repeat above step until your cookie sheet is full
• Place 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets. I use parchment paper to line my cookie sheets. Then it is simple to transfer an entire tray of hot cookies unto the cooling rack.
• Bake 10-12 minutes or until set. 
• Remove from cookie sheets to cooling racks.

Easy Lemon Drizzle Frosting

This is where I LOVE having my cookies on parchment paper. Just slide the sheet of cookie laden parchment paper from the baking sheet to the cooling rack and from the cooling rack to the table top, or work surface. Then, the cookies can be drizzled with frosting and sprinkles while they are still on the parchment paper. This makes for a quick and easy cleanup once the frosting has set.

Ingredients

1 cup of powdered sugar

1-1/2 to 2 Tbsp. lemon juice, or bottled lemon juice

sparkling white decorating sugar.

• Mix all of the ingredients in a small bowl with a spoon. 
• Drizzle frosting back and forth across cooled cookies and then use sparkling white decorating sugar. 

Easy isn't it? Homemade happiness on a plate was never so easy! 

Chocolate Chip Oat Crispy Cookies

I love Cocoa Dyno-Bite cereal.  I eat it for breakfast, for a quick chocolate fix , and for a late night snack. Yep, I just love my crispy cocoa cereal that turns the white milk into chocolate milk. Yum! No other cocoa cereal will do for this woman.

So what does my love for cocoa dyno bites have to do with chocolate chip oat crispy cookies? Well, cocoa dyno-bites are the not-so-secret, secret ingredient in my cookies. I see your eyebrows heading for your hairline. Stop it!  It shouldn't surprise you that I am putting cereal in an oatmeal cookie. 

I found a lovely recipe over at Sweet Peas and Saffron for Butterscotch Oatmeal Rice Krispie Cookies. However, the hubby isn't all that crazy about butterscotch. I decided to adapt the recipe by substituting chocolate chips AND cocoa dyno-bites cereal. 

These tasty cookies have a little snap on the outside, a tender, cookie dough quality in the centers, and just get better as they sit in the cookie jar.

I like dark chocolate and the semi-sweet chocolate snuggled in a buttery, oaty nest of semi-sweet cookie is my idea of pantry-style cookie perfection. Love makin' homemade happiness on a plate!

We decided that these cookies are even better on the second day. I can't tell you anything about day three because........the cookies were gone.



Chocolate Chip Oat Crispy Cookies
Yield: about 4 dozen cookies

Ingredients
2¼ cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cup quick oats
1 cup butter, softened
¾ cup granulated sugar
¾ cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs, or 2 medium eggs and 1 egg white
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 
2 cups Cocoa Dyno-Bites

Directions

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. 
• Line your cookie sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
• In a one quart bowl, combine flour, salt, baking soda and oatmeal.
• In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugars until light and fluffy with an electric mixer. 
• Add in the vanilla and eggs until well combined.

• Gently stir in the chocolate chips and Cocoa Dyno-Bites with a large spoon, or spatula
• Scoop out dough and place on the lined baking sheet. Flatten slightly before baking.

Left side - scoop of cookie dough

Right side - slightly flattened cookie dough

Note: My cookie scoop holds about 2 level Tablespoons, or 1/8 cup. 

• Bake for about seven minutes,or until lightly golden on the edges. Do not over bake. You want them slightly soft and they will firm up as they cool.
• Cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.

Bill and I ate warm cookies and cold cookies. They are yummy both ways. 

HE IS RISEN! Crown and Flower Cookies for Sunday School

Kid art Easter crown and flower cookies. Jesus traded his crown of thorns for his heavenly crown when he arose on Easter Sunday morning. In remembrance of this event, I made my almost famous, sugar cookies and piped on royal icing in purple and yellow. Purple for royalty and yellow for remembrance. 

Happy Easter! 

Royal Icing Recipe                          Click Here
Sallee's Sugar Cookies Recipe       Click Here

Holiday Cookie Box for Christmas

Individual packages of homemade, decorated holiday cookies waiting to be boxed with a nine inch by eight inch Christmas tree cookie. 

A Recycled Cookie Cutter

Last year I received  Ferrero Rocher chocolates packaged in a plastic, Christmas tree shaped container. Thrifty gal and recycler that I am, my first thought was to reuse the empty container as a cookie cutter for an extra large, nine inch by eight inch, Christmas tree cookie.

Changing An Annual Baking Tradition

For years I have been making Christmas tree mini-cakes for my family. Hopefully they won't mind not getting a mini-cake this year. Instead, I decided to make a large Christmas tree cookie and package it with a variety of holiday cookies.

9" by 8" decorated, sugar cookie, Christmas trees.

Cinnamon candies, or red hots, yellow candy stars, and white piped garland and white Christmas bulbs decorate each cookie tree. I used a #3 piping tip to form the white bulbs and garland.

My classic, almost famous, sugar cookie dough became Christmas tree cookies, holly leaf cookies, and snow flake cookies. 

Sallee's Sugar Cookie Recipe

I used a #3 piping tip  to form the white icing features. The black icing was piped using a sixteen inch piping bag with the tip snipped off. To form the reindeer eyes, first pipe a bead of white icing with the #3 inch tip. Next, pipe a dot of black icing on top of the white icing bead. Now you have an eye looking at you.

Peanut butter, roll out cookie dough became Christmas trees and Rudolph, the Red Nose Reindeer cookies. 

My first time using this dough did not work well. The dough is sticky and soft UNLESS you refrigerate it for at least twenty-four hours. Then, you still have to work quickly to get it rolled out on a pastry mat. An additional, necessary step required flipping the dough over and re-flouring my pastry mat.

Also, I gave my cookie cutters a flour bath. Seriously, I had to submerge them in flour to prevent the dough from sticking to the cutters.

I will be looking for a different peanut butter cookie recipe to use.

Snowflake sugar cookies decorated with pale blue icing and Betty Crocker snowflake decor mix.

Sugar cookie holly leaves and peanut butter Christmas trees. For the holly leaf berries, I sorted out the red trees from the Christmas tree sprinkles and used them for the berries. Later I used a #3 piping tip and white icing to pipe ribbing onto the holly leaf cookies. This detail can be seen below in the fifth picture, or next to the last picture.

Sugar cookie trees decorated with yellow candy stars and Betty Crocker snowflake decors.

Christmas tree cookies decorated with a Wilton sprinkles mix. 

Chocolate bells with crushed candy cane trim. Piped borders were formed with a #5 piping tip.

Chocolate Roll Out Cookies 

Chocolate, roll out cookie dough became Christmas bells and Rudolph, the Red Nose Reindeer cookies.

Chocolate Cutout Cookie Recipe

I've used this dough before and it rolls out well after being chilled for two hours. 

Decorating Icing Recipe

Decorated and ready to pack in a shirt gift box from the local dollar store.
Christmas print, shirt gift boxes are sold in a three pack for two dollars.

Carefully placed and ready for a lid!

Sallee's Sugar Cookies - A Cookie Exchange Winner!

The two zip bags of cookies were for my coworker, Carrie. Carrie is a big fan of my sugar cookies.

Deck the cook with a flowered apron Fa la la la la, la la la la

Bake the fav'rit'  Christmas cookies Fa la la la la, la la la la

Roll out sugar cookies. Yep, I decided to take my classic, holiday sugar cookies to the cookie exchange at work this year. In addition to using the traditional cookie recipe, I decided to make my favorite shape of all time, Christmas trees. 

This year, twenty-seven of my coworkers brought three dozen cookies to the cookie exchange. The cash prizes were a great surprise!

Yes, I am a Christmas tree lover. The variety of decorating schemes for Christmas trees are endless! This love of decorating Christmas trees, includes making and decorating Christmas tree cookies.

Inspiration for this year's cookie exchange Christmas tree cookies was found over at Bakers Royale. Blogger Naomi Robinson's gorgeous white on white Christmas tree cookie pictures provided the decorating scheme for my cookies. 

• Thinned frosting was spread on the cookies with a butter knife. 
• The frosted cookies were placed on a cooling rack that was sitting on a baking sheet to collect drips.
• The frosting was glossy and set in about twenty minutes. 
• Then the garland and decorations were piped on.
• White garland and green "ornaments" were piped on with a pastry bag that had the tip snipped.
•  The blue ornaments were piped on with a #2 piping tip and pastry bag. 

For the cookie and frosting recipes click on the link:  Sallee's Sugar Cookies

SalleeShares-Holiday Baking Championship

2013 Mini Snowman Cake by Sallee Bonham 

#BakingChampionship

Anticipation! (sing song voice) I have been anticipating the first episode of Holiday Baking Championship with host Bobby Deen since I saw the first preview and set the DVR to record the series.

Baking is my thing! You know that because you have seen the pics of my holiday cakes, cookies, and cupcakes. 

The Prize Holiday Baking Championship's grand prize is $50,000 and the title, "Holiday Baking Champion."

The Judges
The eight competing bakers met the judges Duff Goldman of Charm City Cakes, Nancy Fuller of Farmhouse Rules, and Lorraine Pascal, fashion model and TV cook.

Heat One
Bobby Deen introduced the first sixty minute heat of "Holiday Cookie Madness."
First, each baker unwrapped a Christmas present containing a cooking tool that determined what type of cookie they had to bake:

• a spatula for layered cookies
• a French rolling pin for rolled cookies 
• a cookie press for spritz cookies
• a scoop for drop cookies

Then, the holiday bakers began creating Christmas cookies, or as Bobby Deen said,"The cookie beast has been awakened!"

Struggling to Bake
At the end of the sixty minute heat, two of the bakers, Stephanie Hart and Terra Nelson, were obviously behind the other six contestants. 

Stephanie stated that she was a cake girl and only baked one cookie. 

Terra struggled with timing. Even using the blast chiller, her HOT layered cookies were difficult to put together with bourbon cream. Yes, bourbon cream! 

Organized and Talented
Even before the judging began, I could tell who was going to be in the lead. Some people just have a knack for being organized and quick, not one wasted movement in the kitchen. I am NOT one of those people and admire the skill.

Erin, Bill, Dante, Punky, David, and Naylet were a joy to watch in the kitchen as they created their version of layered, rolled, spritz, or drop cookies.

First Heat Results
Erin Campbell won the first heat. Her advantage in the main heat was free range of the pantry to pick a substitute ingredient of her choice.

Main Heat Challenge
Contestants must bake 3 different cookies, one dozen of each, within ninety minutes AND use three ingredients. Sounds a bit like the dessert version of Chopped!

And the Ingredients Are...

1. Bittersweet Chocolate
2. Fresh Oranges
3. Toffee Bits

Smart girl Erin used her first heat advantage to substitute peppermint candy for the fresh oranges. The contestants instantly began planning the three cookies they wanted to prepare. 

Surprise!Host Bobby Deen had a surprise ingredient for all of the bakers to use, raspberry jam. Seriously, this reminded me of the Chairman's Culinary Surprise on ICA. 
However, not one contestant seemed to be thrown off by this addition. All of them knew where and how they would use the raspberry jam. 

Flavor Combos
I loved the flavor combinations chosen by the contestants. 

• orange ginger - Bill, Stephanie
• bittersweet chocolate and coffee - Bill
• orange hazelnut with raspberry- David
• coffee toffee- David
• orange rosemary- Naylet
• pumpkin toffee creme brulee - Erin
• chocolate raspberry - Dante, Naylet, Erin, Stephanie
• orange nut - Dante
• pistachio orange - Terra
• toffee cinnamon - Terra
• raspberry orange - Punky
• toffee cherry - Naylet
• peppermint hot chocolate - Erin

Mmmmm....makes my mouth water just reading through those flavor combos.

And the Judges Said...
The top bakers were:

• Erin
• Bill
• Naylet - Home baker Naylet won the first holiday bake off! Woohoo Naylet! 

Struggling Bakers

• Stephanie - cake like cookies. Great taste. Duff admired the fact she didn't have a recipe and baked three tasty cookie. However, they were too spongy. Stephanie was chosen to go home.
• Terra - She was slammed by the judges for her madeleine cookie. All three judges agreed that it was the texture of sponge cake. 

Safe Bakers

David, Dante, and Punky

I cannot wait to watch the seven bakers on the next episode,"Classic Holiday Flavors."

Cookies I Am Not Familiar With

Mandelbrot 
According to Tori Avey, "Mandelbrot cookies are an Ashkenazi Jewish dessert dating back to the early nineteenth century. Mandelbrot are closely related to the Italian cookies known as biscotti, which were first made in the Middle Ages. The word mandelbrot means almond (mandel) and bread (brot) in both German and Yiddish."

Rugelach  

The wiseGeek shares this information,"Rugelach is a Jewish pastry originating in Ashkenazy, or European Jewish, culture. It has many alternative spellings, including rugelakh, rugulach, rugalach, ruggalach, and rogelach in the plural, and rugalah and rugala in the singular. The pastry is also sometimes referred to as a butter horn, nut horn, or cream cheese cookie in the United States."