Christmas Past

Easy Paper Heart Ornaments These are some past posts with Christmas crafts and recipes you might enjoy.  The Paper Heart Ornaments are easy and if you are like most crafters I know, you have an ample supply of beautiful paper that would work perfectly for these hearts.

Cracker Toffee

Additively good, salty-sweet toffee with the crunch of crackers and coated with chocolate.  It’s pretty easy to make and doesn’t take special tools (no candy thermometer needed).

Vellum Ornaments

I’ve been making these for a few years.  They’re not a quick project like the paper hearts but they are beautiful, even when doing a more simple design.

Chocolate Mice

Dip a maraschino cherry in chocolate and put a chocolate kiss on it.  Add ears from sliced almonds and what do you get? A very cute little chocolate mouse that would look adorable on a tray of Christmas cookies, or perched on a Buche de Noel.

Cheese Wafers

Rich and buttery, these are easy to make – just like stir and drop cookies.  But they’re savory, not sweet.  Yum.

Thanks for your visit.

Chocolate Cherry Mice

Not a creature was stirring except maybe a chocolate cherry mouse.  Or at least the person making Chocolate Cherry Mice.

It isn’t quite time to be nestled all snug in your bed waiting for Santa but it’s getting close.  I meant to do a new batch of these cute cherry-chocolate mousies and get some better photos but it didn’t happen.  So these photos are from the ones I made last year.

They’re still very sweet and even if none of you make chocolate cherry mice this Christmas, I’ll be happy to let these chocolate cuties out into blogland.  Maybe next year I’ll get it together to make a batch a little earlier and take some new pictures sooner.

Chocolate Cherry Mice

Ingredients:

Maraschino Cherries with stems for the tails

Chocolate Kisses

Melting Chocolate (I use Guittard Chocolate Apeels or you can get Meltaways or Candymelts at Michaels – match the chocolate of the kisses to the melting chocolate)

Sliced Almonds

Decorating Gel in Black and Pink  (you could also use silver dragees for eyes and noses or dots of melted chocolate.)

Parchment Paper

Directions:

Drain the cherries and pat them dry with paper towel.

Melt some of the melting chocolate. I use a bowl in the microwave, stirring and checking every 15 to 20 seconds until melted. You can use a double-boiler. A wooden chopstick is my stirrer of choice.

Dip cherries in melted chocolate.  Set dipped cherries down on parchment or waxed paper covered rimmed baking sheet with stems pointing up. Coat stems with chocolate. Let set enough to handle.

Now attach the flat bottom of the dipped cherry with melted chocolate to the flat bottom of a kiss. If at any point your melted chocolate gets to hard, microwave for 10 more seconds and stir.

For stability I like to dab some of the melted chocolate on the bottom of the “body” for a more flat base. Let set.

Find sliced almonds of similar size and break off the pointed end.

Use melted chocolate to glue the almonds onto the back of the head (the kiss). Let set.

If you like, coat the almond with more melted chocolate so your mice are all chocolate. Let set.

If at any point you see cherry juice seepage, just dot some melted chocolate over to seal.

Carefully dot on eyes and nose with decorating gel.

The gel doesn’t set up dry so be careful how you handle your mice.  You can opt to use silver dragees or other tiny candy for eyes and nose or dot on melted dark chocolate for milk chocolate mice and the reverse on dark chocolate mice.

They would look cute on a Yule log or added to a holiday cookie (or cheese) platter.

Now I have to scurry and get some other Christmas projects done.

Thank you for for stopping by.  I appreciate the visit.