December in Review (and our Book of the Month Hint for January!)

Posted January 1, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Hints / 2 Comments

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Man oh man, the end of the year came up FAST. Christmas was wonderfully hectic this year. I made apple pie spice candied walnuts, coffee muffins, almond white hot chocolate, Reese’s Pieces chocolate chip cookies, honeycomb candy, almond toffee, wine-marinated frozen grapes, and SO MANY batches of peppermint humbugs! 🙂  So if I’ve seemed absent on social media or took forever to respond to blog comments, I blame the fact that Christmas was holding me captive in my kitchen. 😉

In the midst of the craziness, I still managed to crank out a menu I’ve been wanting to make for a looong time: food for The Nutcracker! I always have fun with festive, seasonal menus, and Nutcracker was no exception. Let’s take a look at what we made!

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Holy Dancing Sugar Plums, Batman! I started our Nutcracker menu with a Christmas classic: Roasted Chestnuts. Though the Mister continually insists that they don’t count because I made them in the stove instead of “o’er an open fire”, I think they turned out pretty delicious. And one of the comments on the original post got me thinking that coating them with cinnamon/sugar would make them even better! Next came Clara’s Christmas Tree, a pine-shaped pastry recipe that rocketed up to become one of my most shared recipes (thanks, folks!). Our side dish was a fun cheese and cracker recipe: Mouse King Cheese Bites. Finally, we ended with homemade Byzantine Sugar Plums for dessert and a Sugar Plum Punch bonus recipe!

 

One Nutty Tea. Our Nutcracker-themed Christmas tea featured a mix of chestnut tea balanced with gingerbread flavor. It’s one of my simpler blends, but I’m such a big fan of Adagio’s chestnut tea, I didn’t want to overshadow the base-line flavor too much.

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Thank you to everyone who completed our survey! With my first baby due in just a few weeks (!!!), I’m looking to make some changes to how I organize my posts next year. To help with the decision-making process, I created a survey for you all to let me know a little bit about yourselves, how and when you view posts, and what you think of certain scheduled posts. Thank you SO much—your feedback has been super helpful, and I plan on publishing a post in the beginning of January explaining the changes you can expect to see in the coming year. If you’d like to fill out the survey and haven’t yet had a chance, you can access it here.

café, concept, designer

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Make way for Baby! As I mentioned above, Baby is due quite soon (to the tune of January 22nd, but we have reason to believe they may come a bit later). I plan on announcing the birth briefly either here or on social media within a couple days of the big event. After that, I have finished recipe posts scheduled and ready to go for the next several months. So no matter how hectic things get when the new little one comes a long, you’ll still see new material posted here on the regular. I just won’t be as present on social media, and it will probably take a while to respond to comments. But sharing pictures of a new cute baby totally makes up for that, right? 😉

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But now let’s look ahead to January and our new Book of the Month hint photo!

Any guesses at what the next book will be?

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The new menu premieres this Thursday! 😀

 

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