Jessica's Dinner Party

by jessica yoon

cookies & bars

Easy Holiday Treats & Recipes

Easy Holiday Treats | Jessica's Dinner Party

It’s the final countdown to Christmas and nothing says the holidays quite like a a box of homemade goodies. It’s always hectic leading up to the big day and so I’ve compiled a few recipes for easy holiday treats that can either be prepped or made in advance. They are great wrapped up and snuggled into a tin as a gift (FYI this is what I made for my Food52 Holiday Swap!) or mini desserts for gatherings! I’ll be posting the recipes one by one throughout the week, in the meantime read on to see exactly what I made and the details for the first recipe!

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Christmas: Behind the Scenes

It’s been a bit quiet around here, but I haven’t forgotten about this little space!  I’ve been baking like a mad woman for a little cookie project I decided to undertake for the holidays.  I’m making cookie gift boxes to give as presents and to hand out as favors at various parties.  It’s been a lot of fun trying out new recipes, as well as disastrous.  I seriously thought I was cursed by the cookie gods, because everything I baked was either too difficult to work with, ugly, or ruined.  Luckily, my frustrations didn’t keep me from trying harder, because I did find a few solutions and good recipes that I think are keepers for the years to come.

Instead of a recipe, I thought I’d post a series of photographs showing my failures and mistakes.  This is for those who have become discouraged, exhausted, angry, and frustrated, or are in any other emotional turmoil because of baking.  Feel encouraged!  Holiday baking is so easy feat!

Langues de chat, more like blobs de chat.

Does anyone else find Dorie Greenspan’s shortbread extremely difficult to handle?!  Am I the ONE person in the whole world that just can’t follow Dorie???…

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Blueberry Crumb Bar Cake

There was dessert!  How could a picnic end without something sweet?  Before planning the picnic, I read an article in Martha Stewart’s Living magazine about how to prepare a picnic.  By chance I have a subscription to the magazine.  I think it came as a package deal with something else I ordered or it was a secret friend who thought I would enjoy it, but in any case, I was surprised when I kept on receiving an issue month after month.  There were a lot of cute ideas there, including the tomato hand pies that inspired my roasted tomato sandwiches and sour cherry crumb cakes for dessert. I decided to follow the article and make a crumb cake because it’s easy to transport, and the picture looked so scrumptious.

From the time I read the article to the time I went to the grocery store something in my mind changed and I believed that the article talked about raspberry crumb bars instead of sour cherry crumb cakes.  I set out to find raspberries and didn’t even look at the cherries.  However, when I found the raspberries I was totally shocked at how expensive they were.  Half a pint was $4 and since I would have to buy at least three of them to make the bars I would be spending a grand total of $12! It might not sound like a lot to some people, but for a recent college graduate, it’s quite a sum.  So, after a good ten minutes in front of the berry stand, I decided to buy blueberries, two pints for $5, instead.

 

I was really happy about my choice of fruit and could not wait to start baking.  When I opened the magazine to read the recipe, I realized that I the whole time I was thinking about crumb bars and that I couldn’t make the crumb cakes anyway because I didn’t have any buttermilk or an acceptable substitute on hand.  I quickly scanned the indexes of all the cookbooks I had and searched online for a blueberry crumb bar recipe and found one at AllRecipes.com written about by Smitten Kitchen that was easy and simple.  Yay!

 

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