Christmas Eve Treats!

Our family tradition for Christmas Eve is to spend the day making (and eating) snacks and treats while watching our favorite Christmas movies. My husband and I have done this every year since we’ve been married (except for one spent away from home when my grandfather was sick). I love that a tradition we started when we were just a baby family is something we get to really introduce to our son this year, now that he “gets” the holidays a little better.

I’ll be home most of the day today with O by myself as hubby has to work until 2, so I’m sure we’ll be watching “Mickey Christmas” over and over if he has any choice in our holiday movie selections. He absolutely loves anything Mickey Mouse and particularly loves the “Once Upon a Christmas” and “Twice Upon a Christmas” shorts. I’ll see if I can rotate in some other cartoons that I like, like the Guardians of Childhood movie (that I’m blanking on the title of! O does love the fighting Easter bunny so this will be an easy sell) and Charlie Brown (although O would rather than just be about Snoopy at this age). After O goes to bed, my husband and I will get to watch our favorites, like Christmas Vacation (which I think I can quote in its entirety – LOVE), Scrooged and Die Hard 1/2 (which are absolutely Christmas movies, right?).

We’ll also spend some time making treats, which was conveniently one of my goals for December. I’m happy to say that I have found a couple of fun new holiday snack options. Two of the treats we’ve tried and liked from “indulgent” – i.e. not light – end of the spectrum are the Pioneer Woman’s Marshmallow Pops and Trisha Yearwood’s No Bake Chocolate Pretzel Peanut Butter Squares, which have a cumbersome name but are delicious.

The marshmallow pops are really simple and fun if you’d like to let your kids get in on the action. We tried these out because my oven died and it gave O the chance to do some sprinkling (he loves sprinkling!) even though we couldn’t do sugar cookies. The only variation I made from the original recipe (linked above) is to use small pretzel sticks instead of traditional candy/cake pop sticks. I honestly went this route because my grocery store didn’t have the candy sticks, but it ended up working out nicely because they were sturdy enough to work like the candy sticks and you had a little chocolate covered pretzel as a snack after you ate the marshmallow. A win win! To make these, just melt almond bark (I did vanilla and chocolate and stirred some crushed peppermints into the chocolate bark before we used it). Stick your pretzel stick/candy stick in the almond bark before you stick it into the marshmallow – this really helps the marshmallow stick hold onto the stick. Let those set up for 20 minutes before dipping the marshmallow back in the bark to coat the top and then sprinkle to your heart’s content. You could also roll these in crushed cookie crumbs or peppermints. O had a great time making these!

The peanut butter pretzel bars never hang around long enough to take a picture, which is recommendation enough for this recipe right? My husband actually prefers these to chocolate peanut butter balls (buckeyes) which is seriously saying something! I followed the recipe (linked above) to the letter for this one except for a) making it in an 8X8 pan so they were thicker and b) sprinkling a little finishing salt over the top of the chocolate at the end to echo the saltiness in the peanut butter layer. To make these, you just crush up pretzels (another great task for a kiddo!) and mix the pretzel crumbs with melted butter and powdered sugar for the base layer, then coat that with melted chocolate. Refrigerate until firm and then cut into squares – quick and easy and definitely delicious!

Today, I’ll be trying out a couple of “healthier” treats and I’ll let you know how those turn out! Hopefully better than this attempt at Puppy Chow (which my husband made me take a pic of for you guys) – kindergarteners can make Puppy Chow but somehow I screwed it up!

It turns out, it really does matter that you drizzle the chocolate on first then add the topping (brownie mix in this recipe) or else you just get giant clumps of chocolate!

What are your favorite holiday treats? Any Christmas Eve traditions?

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