12 Days of Christmas: Day Ten: Christmas Movie Round-Up

What is Christmastime without Christmas movies? Well, it's still Christmastime, but it's slightly less awesome. This Christmas, as per tradition, I watched my two favorite Christmas movies for the umpteenth time AND I watched a film that, you will be surprised to learn, I'd never seen before. So now I'm going to talk about those three movies a little bit.

1. The Muppet Christmas Carol

There are so many things to love about this movie. So rather than writing a wordy paragraph about them, here's a list I've compiled:

• Charles Dickens
• The Muppets
• Charles Dickens + The Muppets
• Michael Caine
• Singing
• "Fozziwig" 
• Using actual lines from A Christmas Carol
• Bean Bunny
• Crying during the "Tiny Tim is dead" scene
• Crying during all of the songs
• Sam Eagle telling young Ebeneezer that hard work is "the American way" and then changing it to "the British way" after Gonzo whispers in his ear
• The rat clerks
• Waldorf and Statler as Marley and Marley

And that's just to name a few. This movie is so funny, so heartwarming, and so (strangely) faithful to the original that I can't bear not to watch it during the holidays. It's easily my favorite adaptation of A Christmas Carol and one of the best films in the Muppets' catalog.


2. It's a Wonderful Life

I hope no one could argue that this isn't a classic Christmas movie. I don't even really feel the need to explain my reasoning for having it in my top 2. It's all about one man making a major difference in the lives of his friends and neighbors even if he doesn't see it himself, and that's really beautiful. If you've never seen It's a Wonderful Life, you really need to. Not only because it's a great movie but so that you can understand this SNL parody.




3. The Nightmare Before Christmas

Ok, confession time. Before this year, I had never seen The Nightmare Before Christmas. Shocking, I know. I tried watching it a couple of times as a child, but it really creeped me out, so I stopped. Over the years, I heard most of the music from the movie, and I knew what it was about. I even beat the Halloweentown level on Kingdom Hearts. But I just couldn't bring myself to actually sit down and watch the movie. But this Christmas I discovered it on Netflix and I decided it was time. And you know what? It was just as creepy as it was when I was a kid. But it was also pretty funny. I especially enjoyed the scene where Jack is trying to figure out the science behind Christmas. This chalkboard is great. Science!

And I felt that as a person who grew up in the 90s, it was my duty and obligation to have watched this perennial Hallow-mas/Christma-ween classic. The ending was a bit abrupt, but that's fine. It was still a pretty solid film, and I'm glad I saw it. 

And you know, this movie isn't all that different from It's a Wonderful Life: man is dissatisfied with life, wishes for different life, realizes life was actually pretty good. And also there's skeletons. Yeah, that sounds about right. Merry Movie-Watching, everyone!

12 Days of Christmas: Day Nine: New Year's Resolutions

Well, it's that time again, friends: time for New Year's Resolutions. Aside from "blog at least once per week," I'm going to keep my resolutions to myself, mostly because they sound lame. But to give you something to ponder, here's a great list of resolutions by Woody Guthrie that I found on Brain Pickings. I think I'll take a page from Woody's book and spend 2013 working more and better and washing my teeth, if any.

1. Work more and better
2. Work by a schedule
3. Wash teeth if any
4. Shave
5. Take bath
6. Eat good - fruit - vegetables - milk
7. Drink very scant if any
8. Write a song a day
9. Wear clean clothes - look good
10. Shine shoes
11. Change socks
12. Change bed cloths often
13. Read lots good books
14. Listen to radio a lot
15. Learn people better
16. Keep rancho clean
17. Dont get lonesome
18. Stay glad
19. Keep hoping machine running 
20. Dream good
21. Bank all extra money
22. Save dough
23. Have company but dont waste time
24. Send Mary and kids money
25. Play and sing good
26. Dance better
27. Help win war - beat fascism
28. Love mama
29. Love papa
30. Love Pete
31. Love everybody
32. Make up your mind
33. Wake up and fight

12 Days of Christmas: Day Eight: Eggnog and Angel Food Cake

You know what goes hand-in-hand during the holiday season? Eggnog and angel food cake. I bet you're wondering why, dear reader. Well, I'll tell you!

I always make my own eggnog this time of year. I think it tastes better than the store-bought stuff, it's not a strange shade of yellow, and I feel comforted knowing exactly what's going into it. Plus, when people drink it, I get that praise I so crave. So a few years ago I started making egg nog, and I've pretty well perfected it by now (if I do say so myself), but one thing has always eluded me: what to do with the leftover egg whites. My recipe calls for a dozen egg yolks, leaving me with a lot of unused egg. I could make egg white omelets or some bullshit, but that's way too healthy.

So this year, for the first time, I decided to Google what to do with leftover egg whites, and I discovered that angel food cake just happens to require about a dozen of them. Hooray! So now I've got a new holiday tradition. For every batch of eggnog I make, I also have to bake a cake. Logic!

My eggnog recipe can be found on this previous post. Here's how I made the angel food cake:

Ingredients

• 1 cup cake flour (not self-rising)
• 1 cup, plus 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 cup egg whites (about 12 large eggs) at room temperature
• 1 tsp cream of tartar
• 2 tsp fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a tube or Bundt pan.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, 1/2 cup sugar, and salt.

3. In the bowl of an electric mixer, begin to whip the egg whites on medium speed. When they become foamy, add the cream of tartar and lemon juice. The cream of tartar will act as a stabilizer for the eggs.

4. Increase the speed to high and continue to whip the egg whites until they just begin to hold their shape in soft, droopy peaks. Gradually whip the remaining sugar into the whites, 1/4 cup at a time. Do not overwhip. You want them soft and cloud-like. Just before you finish whipping, add the vanilla.

5. With a rubber spatula, gradually fold the flour mixture into the egg whites.

6. Spoon batter into pan, smooth the top, and bake for 45 minutes.

7. Remove from the oven and immediately invert the pan over a cooling rack and let it sit until cool. Then remove the pan and enjoy!

12 Days of Christmas: Day Seven: Happy New Year!

Who says you can't make a snow angel in Florida?

Happy 2013, everyone!

12 Days of Christmas: Day Five: Paint Sample Calendars

In addition to my very young nieces and nephews, I have three older nieces, aged 13, 17, and 19. As with the younger kids, I wanted to make something for Christmas that would appeal to all three of them and would be somewhat utilitarian. I found an awesome tutorial for paint sample calendars and decided to try my hand at it. So here goes.

Project #4: Paint Sample Calendar

Supplies

• Frame (Following the advice of the tutorial, I got one from IKEA named NYTTJA. They have a picture width of 11.75" by 15.75" and only cost $3.99.)
• Poster board for mounting
• Paint swatches
• Scissors
• Glue
• Straight edge 
• Wet- or dry-erase marker
• Velcro

1. First, let's talk about paint swatches. When I started this project, I was under the impression that Lowe's would give me one of those big paint swatch books and I could just rip the strips I wanted out of it. Not so. Nowadays (at Lowe's, anyway), free paint swatches do not come in long convenient strips. They come in very inconvenient squares that you would need to individually cut to size for this project. What I did was sweet-talk the Lowe's guy into letting me borrow the book of paint swatch strips, which I then took home, chose the colors I wanted and scanned them into my computer. My boyfriend later pointed out that I could have just scanned one strip and then changed the colors on the computer. If you are computer savvy, feel free to do that. In the end it was a bit annoyed but worked fine to just scan all the colors I wanted.

2. OPTIONAL STEP: I didn't want the names of the paint colors on my swatches. I thought they would be distracting. So I used the eyedropper tool in Paint to match the paint colors and then color out the words on the swatches.

3. Cut/print swatches to size. If you use the NYTTJA frame, a 2" width for each strip works well. If you're using a different frame, keep in mind that you need seven strips to fit comfortably within your picture area so size accordingly. Since all of my strips were scanned into the computer, I just used the ruler in Word to make sure they were all 2" wide and then the lengths adjusted around that.

4. Secure swatches to poster board. I don't have pictures of this process, but what worked well for me was placing all of the strips down first with a little tape to make sure my spacing was good and then individually gluing them down while leaving the other strips in place for reference.

5. Place completed poster board in frame.

6. Since I gave this as a gift, I wanted to include the writing utensil. You can use a dry-erase marker, but I opted to go with wet-erase, like you would use on overhead projector pages. My rationale was that wet-erase stays on better and would be less likely to fade over the course of a month and the point of the pen is finer for writing on the calendar. Plus, dry-erase can be difficult to remove after a long time, and wet-erase can be cleaned with just a wet paper towel.

And that's it! I did three calendars, each in the favorite color of the niece in question. Then I filled in January to get them started. Needless to say, they loved them. Or at least pretended to.

12 Days of Christmas: Day Four: Brownies in a Jar

I've been wanting to do this for a couple of years, and this crafty Christmas seemed like a good time.

Project #3: Brownies in a Jar

Mixes in a jar really appeal to me for some reason. They combine the craftiness of scratch-made food with the ease of store-bought mixes. The idea, if you've never seen it, is that you put all of the dry ingredients for a given recipe in a jar, measured out and usually layered in a decorative way. Then you give it as a gift, along with instructions for adding wet ingredients and cooking. It's like giving them brownies, except the jars keep longer and the receiver gets to share the glory of making something delicious. 

Ok, so brownies in a jar. 

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup dutched cocoa (I used Hershey's Special Dark)
• 1 cup sifted all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup peanut butter chips
• 1/2 cup mini semi-sweet chips

1. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. 

2. Layer ingredients in a quart-size jar in the following order: sugar, cocoa, flour mixture, peanut butter chips, and semi-sweet chips. Tap the jar a bit after each layer to allow the layer to settle. By the time you get to the chips, you might have to push everything down a bit to make it all fit. 

3. Attach a label with the following instructions and give as a gift. 

• Heat oven to 350 F.
• In a large bowl, mix 1/2 cup (1 stick) of melted and cooled butter and 2 eggs, lightly beaten, with the contents of the jar.
• Pour into greased 8x8 baking pan.
• Bake for 35 minutes. 

Here are some labels I made if you don't want to write all that out:

12 Days of Christmas: Day Three: Homemade Play-Dough

I spent a lot of time over the past few weeks agonizing over what to get my youngest nieces and nephews for Christmas. There are four of them between the ages of 1 1/2 and 5. I wanted something I could make that would be appropriate for all of them and, let's be honest, wouldn't cost a lot of money. Which led me to...

Project #2: Homemade Play-Dough

Supplies

• 1 cup flour
• 1/3 cup salt
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 cup water
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• food coloring

1. Mix dry ingredients (flour, salt, cream of tartar) in a 2-quart saucepan.

2. Add water and oil and heat over medium-low, stirring constantly.

3. As you stir, the mixture will start to solidify. When you notice it starting to thicken, add food coloring and mix in. It's much easier to add at that stage than waiting until it's totally cooked.

4. Keep stirring. Your arm may start to tire, but within a few minutes the mixture will thicken and start to pull away from the sides of the saucepan. You'll know it's done when it has become a blob of play-dough! It'll be easy to get out of the pan because the dough will want to stick to itself.

5. Set aside to let it cool and then store in an airtight container or plastic Ziplock bag. 

This recipe yields about 2 cups of play-dough. I made four batches, each in a different color, and then divided each batch into four half-cup servings.

Here are the things that were great about this:

• It was fast.
• It was easy.
• It wasn't expensive.
• The kids loved it. 
• The play-dough is non-toxic. 
• I can now make replacement dough for Cranium. 
• You get to play with play-dough!

12 Days of Christmas: Day Two: Photo Tile Coasters

This Christmas I decided to go the frugal route and make most of my presents. So for the next few days, I'm going to post tutorials for my many gift projects. Happy Crafting!

Project #1: Photo Tile Coasters

Supplies

• 4" x 4" ceramic tiles
• Modge Podge
• Paintbrush
• Scissors
• Printed photos
• Clear acrylic spray paint
• Cork lining

1. Go to Lowe's, Home Depot, or wherever fine tiles are sold. Okay, not necessarily "fine." I got the cheapest tiles I could get. In retrospect, perhaps I should've paid a little more and gotten smooth ones instead of the textured tiles I ended up with, but I'll address that a little later.

2.Choose which photos you would like to turn into coasters. Re-size them to be the same size and shape as your tiles, in this case 4 in. by 4 in. square.

3. Print. You can use regular computer paper or something fancier if you want. I went with a slightly thicker stock but nothing too special. I also discovered that fading the color of the pictures before printing resulted in less color bleeding in the Modge Podge step. Feel free to play around with it. I did four test coasters before I finally got it right.

4. Cut out your pictures. I cut them slightly smaller than the face of the tiles to avoid having paper stick out over the edges.

5. Modge Podge time! Using a paintbrush, put a thin layer of Modge Podge on the surface of the tile. Before it has time to dry, place your picture atop the Modge Podge and smooth out any air bubbles. This is where the texture of the tiles became a bit of a problem. Working around the grooves in the surface made it difficult to remove the bubbles without messing up the slightly damp paper. However, the resulting texture did look neat, so just follow your heart. But if I were to do this again I would probably choose smooth tiles.

6. Once the picture is placed and the air bubbles are gone, paint a layer of Modge Podge over the entire surface of the picture and around the edges of the tile to ensure it is completely sealed. This is the stage at which I observed bleeding of the colors. Work quickly and don't brush more than you have to to completely cover the picture in Modge Podge. Or maybe you like the bleeding colors effect. In that case, have at it. Again, a test coaster may be in order.

[A word of advice: If you do mess up on your Modge Podging, miss some air bubbles, or you just don't like how the color looks, let the tile dry completely before removing the picture. If you try to rinse off wet Modge Podge it will be sticky and difficult. If you let it dry first, you will be able to peel off the photo fairly easily.]

7. Make sure the Modge Podge has completely covered the picture, sealing it to the tile, and let dry completely. Spray with clear acrylic paint for final sealing and waterproofing and to give the coasters a bit of shine. (You can get matte spray paint if you don't want the shine.) The Modge Podge is itself a sealant, but I do recommend this step as sort of a precautionary measure. You don't want to find later that the Modge Podge is letting in some water.

8. The last step is to affix something to the bottom of your tiles so that they don't mess up your furniture. You can use cork, felt, or even little rubber dots. I went with some cork lining I found at the hobby store because it was thin and already had adhesive attached. All I had to do was cut it to a little smaller than the tiles, peel off the backing, and stick it on.

And that's it! I made sixteen tiles, which ended up being a day-long project, partly because of my trials and errors. But it was worth it for a lovely (and functional!) keepsake that my family members loved.

Dublin: Part 2: History Day

Bet you never thought there would be a "Part 2" in my series of Dublin posts, did you? If you're interested in reviewing, here is the Preface and Part 1. Now I will tell you about the nerdy, nerdy way I spent St. Patrick's Day this year.

My comrades and I spent a large portion of the day learning about Dublin's history and trying (most unsuccessfully) to avoid crowds. We started off by heading to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. The Book of Kells is a very old illuminated manuscript of the Gospels of the New Testament. It was created c. 800 by Celtic monks, and it was, obviously, all done by hand, which is truly amazing. The exhibit is about the creation of the book, going into detail about how the inks would have been made, who likely worked on it, how long it would have taken, and other things of that ilk. And while that may sound stuffy, it really is incredible and totally worth checking out. In this day and age we take easy, machine-aided work for granted, so it's important to be reminded of a time when painstaking craftsmanship was the only way to do things. It's mind-blowing what they were able to achieve and that those achievements have remained intact to this day.

At the end of the exhibit, you get to see some pages of the Book itself, which they turn every so often, so if you go more than once, you're likely to see different pages. Admission to the Book of Kells usually costs around €8 for students, but for St. Paddy's Day, it was free! And because everyone else in the city was pretty focused on stumbling blindly through the streets, the exhibit was almost empty, so we got plenty of time to press our faces up to the glass and take it in. You are never allowed to photograph the Book of Kells, so here is a picture I got off Wikipedia of one of its more famous pages:

Next we went to the National Museum of Ireland primarily to see the bog bodies! The bog bodies, if you've never heard of them, are the mummified corpses of people from hundreds, even thousands, of years ago who were murdered and then thrown into Irish bogs. The lack of air in the swampy land preserved the bodies so well that, when they were found, they still had skin, hair, and clothing. A few even still had the contents of their stomachs, allowing scientists to analyze their final meal! These things are as creepy as they sound, and just as cool. I saw them a couple of years ago and almost passed out; mostly because of the terrible ways most of these people were murdered. But they are so fascinating to look at. I don't have any pictures of the bodies because a. they are kind of gross and b. I felt like it was sort of disrespectful to photograph the dead, but they're worth a look if you ever get the chance. Or if you want to read this Wikipedia page.

Making our way through Dublin was an ordeal that day. The streets were packed with people who didn't even seem to be going anywhere, just wandering in a (presumably) drunken stupor. If ever I've understood the plight of the salmon, it was trying to walk around Temple Bar.

Despite the difficulty, we made it to the historic district and Christ Church Cathedral. As you can read on Wikipedia, Christ Church is the older of Dublin's two medieval cathedrals. It was founded c. 1030, but it still looks amazing today. In addition to its fabulous architecture and beautiful stained glass, Christ Church has some very cool underground vaults with an exhibition about the history of the church.

On our way back to the hotel, we stumbled upon Dublinia, a super-fun interactive museum about the various stages of Dublin's history, from the Viking era to the present day. Unfortunately, we arrived there about an hour before closing, so we didn't get to spend as much time as I would have liked. We were also sharing our experience with a group of very obnoxious Spanish men, who impeded my ability to play dress-up. I still managed a few good costumes, though.

As you can see, Dublinia had all kinds of awesome. It also had this fake man, sitting on a facsimile of a medieval toilet: 

And so, after a lovely day of learning about Dublin's history (and medieval plumbing), we ate dinner and shared a few drinks in honor of St. Patrick. Sláinte!

Halloween Party Recipe Roundup

I just wrote a long and thoughtful post about the Halloween party I threw last Saturday, and then Blogger decided to delete it. So instead I will cut to the chase and post recipes for my two favorite dishes from that party.

Mozzarella-Stuffed Meatballs

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 lb ground pork
• 1 cup breadcrumbs
• 3 eggs
• 1 tbsp Italian seasoning
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• mozzarella string cheese
• olive oil
• 2 jars tomato sauce

Instructions:

1. Combine everything except cheese, oil, and sauce in a bowl and mix thoroughly with your hands. It's very satisfying. And gross.
2. Form mixture into 1.5" to 2" balls.
3. Cut string cheese into cubes. Put one cheese cube inside each meatball, and then reform meat to seal it in.
4. Heat some olive oil in a large skillet. I used cast iron. For flavor!
5. Brown meatballs on all sides in the oil, taking care not to horribly disfigure yourself from oil burns.
6. Set aside browned meatballs, and pour tomato sauce into the skillet and bring to a simmer.
7. Add meatballs back into the sauce, cover, and let simmer until cooked through (about 30 minutes).
8. Enjoy delicious meatballs.

As you can see in my photographic representation of the final dish, I used tons of sauce. You can probably used less, but the sauce was really good, so the more the merrier. Also, some the cheese managed to escape its meaty prison, but as the old saying goes, "Cheese tastes delicious, whether inside meatballs or out." You know that old saying, right?


Butternut Squash Pie

Ingredients:

• 1 (or 2) unbaked and chilled pie shell(s)
• 1/2 cup pureed butternut squash, about the yield of a small to medium squash
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 evaporated milk
• 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger
• 1/8 tsp ground cloves
• a dash of pumpkin pie spice
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 1 tbsp melted butter
• 1 tsp vanilla

Cooking the squash:

1. Cut the butternut squash in half lengthwise. The squash is tough and does not wish to be rent asunder, so be careful not to injure yourself trying to divide this thing. Take it slow and easy.
2. Remove seeds, and then place squash halves facedown on a cooking pan lined with greased foil, to facilitate cleanup, as the cooked squash will tend to stick. 
3. Pour 1/2 cup water into the bottom of the pan, cover loosely, then cook at 400°F for about 55 minutes, or until squash is tender. 
4. Scoop cooked squash out of its skin and puree with an immersion blender (or your preferred method of squash squashing). 
5. Set aside 1/2 cup of pureed squash. Save the rest for eating with some butter and salt, maybe. 

Assembling the pie:

1. Reduce oven temperature to 350°F. 
2. In a mixing bowl, combine squash and brown sugar and beat with an electric mixer until combined. 
3. Add eggs, evaporated milk, spices, salt, flour, butter, and vanilla, and beat until well blended. Note that all the spice proportions can be modified based on your tastes, but trust me when I say this pie was hella good the way I made it. 
4. Pour filling into pie shell. I ended up having enough filling for two 9-inch shells, so I made two not-entirely-full pies. If you have a bigger shell you might be able to use all your filling on one pie, but since the shells usually come in sets of two, I recommend just making two pies. 
5. Bake for 45 to 55 minutes, or until filling is set. After 35 minutes, I checked the pies and put crust protectors around the edges to keep the crusts from burning. If you don't have the fancy silicon crust protectors my dad bought, you can fashion some out of tin foil. Just be careful not to burn yourself on hot pie. 
6. When filling is set, remove from oven, allow to cool, then enjoy some pie. 

These pies were fantastic. I decided to make them because I was once told you could substitute butternut squash for pumpkin in a pumpkin pie recipe, and that fact intrigued me. Making pumpkin pie from scratch was an odious ordeal that I never intend to repeat. Fresh pumpkin is not worth the trouble when canned pumpkin tastes just as good. It's all about the spices, anyway. But the butternut squash was easy to cook, and it really tasted excellent.

So there you go, dear readers, maybe try out these recipes at a holiday party. You won't be disappointed!

Happy Last Year on Earth!

Well, friends, it's 2012. I feel like this first post of the year should be somehow epic. After all, this could be our last year of existence, if you believe those wacky Mayans. I've had an amazing holiday break at home, which included a trip up to Maryland for New Year's. Not only did I go up to Maryland, but while there, I participated in a 1920s-themed murder mystery. 'Twas delightful! I played a character known as "The Baroness." That is a real mink that belonged to my great-grandmother. Baller!

There was a minor snag in our festivities when we discovered that we didn't bring a proper corkscrew, but we made do.

On New Year's Day, we all partook in a Saratoga Springs New Year's tradition called the Peppermint Pig (TM). You have this little pig made of peppermint and you go around the circle and each person says something that he or she was grateful for in the past year. Then you hit it with a hammer! You can read about this tradition in detail by clicking on the picture below. It was both touching and slightly dangerous, so it was perfect for New Year's.

My sojourn up north also included a brief visit to DC, during which I got to visit the wonderful cupcake store Baked and Wired in Georgetown. Because it was early in the day, I decided to go for the "breakfast cupcake" as I called it: a pancake batter cupcake with maple frosting and, get this, candied bacon! It was really tasty, but way too rich.

That's about all I have to report for now, dear readers, but before I go I want to tell you about my two other side projects, both of which have tabs up at the top of this blog. The first is my creative writing blog, aptly titled Pretentious Writing Blog. Feel free to leave comments on my poetry. I hope you like it, but you're not required to. The other new blog I started is brand new for this year. It's called A Year in Lunch. It is my 366-day photo challenge, for which I will be photographing my lunch every day of 2012. Both of these blogs are longing for followers, so check them out and if you like them (or me), follow them. Thanks! Happy New Year!

Merry After-Christmas!

Well, folks, I've been on a bit of a holiday hiatus, but I'm back now, and I have another delicious recipe to share. This Boxing Day, my mother invited my father's extended family over for a Leftovers Party. It was a brilliant idea because we got to eat all new things without actually having to make new dishes AND now I don't have to eat the same leftovers for the next week. Because they're gone. Seriously. Boxing Day Leftovers Party. Try it.

My father's family are very talented in the kitchen, so there were lots of wonderful of things to eat that day, but for me, it was all overshadowed by the dessert my cousin Shawna brought: Cookie Dough Dip with apples. This stuff is incredibly good. There's no actual cookie dough in it, so there's no concern about contracting salmonella, but it's so tasty you wouldn't know the difference. She was kind enough to leave us her recipe, and now I share it with you, dear reader. That's my Christmas gift to you.

Cookie Dough Dip

Ingredients:

• 1 8oz package of cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 1 cup toffee bits

Instructions:

1. Cream together cream cheese and butter.
2. Add all remaining ingredients and mix until well combined.
3. Serve with chocolate graham crackers or apple wedges.

It's that simple! Shawna recommends eating it with graham crackers or apple wedges. I recommend eating it with a spoon!