Christmas Caroling

So a tradition from my family that may well date back to Dickens time is to make cookies and go Christmas caroling and hand out plates of the cookies. There are however a few rules with this activity. First, there has to be rice crispy treats on the plate, second the recipients of the caroling/cookies needs to include the home and visiting teaching families -hey how else am I going to count them as visited in December?
Anyway it's something that Carmen and I have always done, whether it's been on our own or with my family or Carmen's family and pretty much every year that we've gone up to Portland for the holidays we've gone caroling three times -on our own before we left, with her parents on the Sunday evening before Christmas, and with my parents on Christmas eve.
So this year I wanted to try something different, I wanted to explore my Willy Wonka side and try my hand at being a chocholatier... So we were looking around for different recipes and we found that in a cookbook I already owned that was called the spirit of Christmas cooking, there were a BUNCH of candy recipes. So we tried a few, gum drops, a "never fail" divinity, camels, peppermint smores, peppermint patties, peanutbutter balls (dipped in chocolate of course) and chocolate covered cherries. It turned out that the recipes made a few more than we'd anticipated... we ended up making 13 cookie plates and sending a box of goodies to my mom so she could try out or creations, my sisters (as part of their belated Christmas present from us) and we still had enough that we had our fill, but not the boys they wanted to make more of EVERYTHING!!!

Chocolate Covered Cherries


Peanutbutter Balls (foreground) and Chocolate Covered Pecan Camels (background)


Walnut Carmels (top container) "Never Fail" Divinity (second from top container) Peppermint Gumdrops (middle container) Raspberry Gumdrops (second from bottom container) and Orange Gumdrops (bottom container)


Frosted Sugar Cookies -because it's not a cookie plate without at least one type of cookie on it after all...


Not pictured but included on the cookie plates: peppermint smores, almond bark, peppermint patties, fudge and the rice crispy treats... yeah I think that's all...

Yeah the families on our list made out like cookie (or should I say candy) bandits. The only problem is that next year I'll have to either top it (not likely) or ask for new home teaching families because I don't want to disappoint them with a sub par cookie plate... I've set the bar too high...