Holiday Baking

Christmas season somehow brings out the baker wannabe in yours truly. I have never professed to be particularly proficient in this area, preferring to visit our local bakery when an occasion calls for a real dessert. However, the children in our household find it fun to create a little homemade joy.

The one treat we make every year is a delicacy I like to call,"The Lazy Man's Chocolate Covered Pretzel." It could also be known as "Mama's Too Busy Wrapping Presents to Melt Chocolate in The Microwave." Or an even better name: "Can You Believe The Bakery Is Closed and We'll Have To Do This Ourselves?"

Directions:
1. Find your Santa apron and matching hat. I'm not exactly sure where you keep yours but ours was finally found in Barbie's dreamhouse. Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. Or 250. Or 200. Just turn your oven on.

2. Place pretzels on a foil covered baking sheet. Give all broken pretzels to overweight lab drooling at your feet.



2. Top each pretzel with a Hershey's hug. Know that it will take years to unwrap the hundred or so that you will need.




3. Place the cookie sheet in the oven for a minute or more, just until the chocolate begins to melt. Leave them in too long and they could end up like this:



4. If that happens, it will take another year or so to unwrap more hershey's hugs. This is a step you want to avoid.

5. Remove cookie tray from the oven. Carefully, place a M&M on top of each hug. (We use red and green for Christmas, pink and red for Valentine's day, and black and orange for Halloween. We are creative like that.)




6. Place cookie sheet in freezer for at least five minutes to harden. Voila! Lazy Man's Chocolate Covered Pretzels. (Or Mama's Too Busy Wrapping Presents to Melt Chocolate in The Microwave or Can You Believe The Bakery Is Closed and We'll Have To Do This Ourselves?)




To make a Gingerbread House:

1. Take your children to a friend's house. Allow them to experience what it would be like if their mom actually baked.



2. Explain that the Whoppers may cause their houses to implode because of their heaviness. The adults will save them in their pockets for a later use.



3. Remind inexperienced children that the tool they are using is a pastry bag and not anything like the udder they learned about on the field trip to the dairy farm.



To Decorate Sugar Cookies

1. Offer a prayer of thanks for Pillsbury Ready to Bake Sugar Cookies, minus the artificial preservatives that are from the devil.



2. Offer a second prayer of thanks for the overweight lab who will eat all of the sprinkles and random decorations that fall to the floor...



3. ...because Mama is too busy wrapping presents to sweep under the table.



4. Call the bakery again to leave yet another message about their unfortunate, inconvenient business hours during the Christmas season. Email picture of burnt pretzels as proof.