Culinary School - Finals!

Finals are in full swing at culinary school. It's been an exhausting last couple of days. Friday night we had fun at my hubby's company Christmas party. Then just a few hours later I had to wake up at 4:30am in order to leave the house by 5am for my first set of finals! My chocolate final started at 6am on Saturday. We had a 15 minute break for lunch and then my sugar final began. Didn't get home until 6:30pm and by then I was completely wiped out!

I couldn't be happier with how well my chocolate and sugar finals went. There were written finals at the beginning of each and then on to the practicals. Here are my chocolates that I presented to the Chef at the end of the allotted time frame.

Orange Grand Marnier rolled truffles in the chocolate bowl, molded PB chocolates colored with orange, and Palet Or hand dipped truffles textured with gold straws.

Nutter Butter Santas

Ho, Ho, Ho!!!!

I get all giddy when I look at these little Santas. Love his {big} red nose! These little guys were in my last Kraft Foods magazine and I wanted to make them as soon as I saw them. Fun and easy to make. My preschooler loved putting Santa's eyes on and everyone loved eating them!

Pretzel Hugs

These are perfect if you need a small gift to give this Christmas. Buy some of those cute gift boxes and fill them up with these hugs. Let your friends know you are thinking about them this holiday season!

I found this cute idea on a blog called Eighteen25. It's a similar idea as the 5 Minute Turtles only this time using Hershey's Hugs. I made 1/2 hugs and 1/2 kisses.

Reindeer Doughnuts

Only 18 more days until Christmas! Does everyone have their tree up and decorated? We've had so much fun already and are in complete holiday mode! So far we've enjoyed playing in the snow, warming up with some hot chocolate, doing a little Christmas shopping, making smelly Christmas ornaments, and cuddling up for some great holiday movies. Over the next several days I am going to share some easy and adorable things you can make this holiday season. The first one up is Reindeer Doughnuts!

Is everyone familiar with Oriental Trading Company? You know, those fun catalogs with little gadgets, toys, and crafts of about anything you can dream of. I love sitting and browsing through those catalogs. I ordered some things from there for my son's Robot Birthday party last year. Well, did you know they also have recipes on their site? Who knew?!?! Not me, until I spotted these adorable Reindeer Doughnuts.

Deep Dish Cookie Pies

I lived in the burbs of Chicago for a few years right out of college. One of my favorite pizza places there was called Lou Malnati's and fortunately I had one right down the road from my apartment at the time. Lou's has this amazing deep dish cookie dessert that comes out warm and is served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. This is supposed to be a copy-cat recipe of it. It was amazing and brought back some good Chicago-time memories!

I made half of the recipe below and it made 6 deep dish cookies. Enough to share with my neighbors!

Roasted Cabbage with Lemon

I love trying new foods for the first time. This is the first time I've ever eaten cooked cabbage. I know many people eat cooked cabbage as a New Year's tradition but my family never did that. The only way I've eaten cabbage is in cole slaw.

Seems lately, I've been roasting a lot of veggies, and adding lemon juice always adds tons of flavor so I was excited to try this recipe. It turned out great. I'll still admit that I'm not a huge fan of cooked cabbage but I loved the roasted, lemony flavor. Are any of you big cabbage fans?

Buffalo Chicken Nachos

Here's a great appetizer idea for any occasion. We are huge fans of buffalo wings in this house so as soon I saw this recipe I knew my family would love it. I will definitely be making this again the next time we have some friends or family over. Buffalo sauce, blue cheese, celery....need I say more? Enjoy!