This Christmas I decided that I did not have enough to do, so I came up with the idea to make a lot of our gifts for people. I won’t bore you with all of the different things we made, but now that the giving is all done I wanted to share a couple that I was very proud of.

First, every year my mom and I get together and make jewelry. This year P joined us and did a wonderful job making a few things. Not bad for a 6 year old. 🙂

p was not to be outdone, so I headed off to the wonderful world of pinterest to find something a 3 year old could make. She happily made everyone a small jar of honey brown sugar scrub.

Now what was I to make? I made some jewelry for coworkers and teachers. I made cookies for groups and even a few bakery boxes, but my crowning gift that I am most proud of was 3 Ice Cream Sundae Kits.

Of course, since I had been bitten by a crazy bug I decided to make all the things that would go into the box from scratch. Simple right? NO not even a little bit. I started with homemade sprinkles. I will not post tons of pictures of lines of icing but I will say if you are going to make them or are about to start making them STOP NOW and go buy a Multi-Opening Decorating Tip. I wish I had. They were not too bad to make (well except the chocolate, which was too thick and by the end my hands were killing me) but having that tip would have made making them a bit less time consuming and tedious. I made plain, cinnamon, and chocolate. They were wonderful. I wish I had made more so that I still had some around to eat myself.

I then moved on to marshmallows. I tried to make these once before and failed for some reason. I can’t image why? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I don’t have a candy thermometer, and I probably did not wait 24 hours like you’re supposed to.  All that said, this time it was a success and well worth the work and effort. They came out well even though I still don’t have a candy thermometer. I did wait 24 hours this time. The kids even pitched in and helped out.

Now for the part that gave me the most trouble: sugar cookie bowls. Every recipe I found said to just turn a muffin tin upside down, put cookie dough on it, and all would be good. This was a LIE.

For the first batch, I used a drop sugar cookie recipe but it was too thick. It just made cookies, so I crushed them up and added them to the box – since who does not love cookies on ice cream? The second time, I used the recipe I always use for chocolate chip cookies (minus the chips) but it was too thin and ran down the muffin tin ending up on the bottom of my oven. So I thickened the batch, added a bit of baking powder, and tried just one this time instead of a whole tray. FAIL. OK, I added more flour and tried one more time. NOPE. More flour and this time IT WORKED and they tasted amazing and looked very very cool. If I do say so myself –  and I do.

I then made up jars of chocolate and salted caramel sauce. I have to tell you I have made these before and if you do you will never buy sauces again.

The only thing left to do was to put it all together. I also added some crushed up chocolate cake because it sounded like it would be good on ice cream. The kids decorated the boxes.

I will tell you I did not have any sprinkles left, but I did have a little bit of everything else leftover. We all had a bowl of ice cream using the cookie bowls and both sauces. “OH WOW!” ,as the p’s say,  “BEST THING EVER”.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Solstice,Happy Hanukkah, or just have a wonderful day.