Tag: Christmas

Red Velvet Who Pudding and Green Grinch Hot Chocolate

Posted December 28, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 2 Comments

 

I was bummed when I saw that December doesn’t have a fifth Thursday this year, which meant I wouldn’t be able to do a Grinch Who Stole Christmas bonus recipe. Still, when I sat down to decide whether I should make Who Pudding or Green Grinch Hot Chocolate as my dessert this month, I simply couldn’t choose. So I made both!

The pudding is based on a delicious homemade chocolate pudding recipe from Moms Need to Know (I also used some tips from Bunny’s Warm Oven). Of course, you can just add some food coloring to instant pudding if you want, but what kind of a food blog would I didn’t give real, from-scratch chocolate pudding a try? As for the hot chocolate, it’s a peppermint version of the white hot chocolate that’s going to appear in my cookbook next year!

So if you’re not quite ready for Christmas to be over, cook up some rich, chocolatey Who pudding and steaming Green Grinch Hot Chocolate for a sweet winter treat. 🙂

Read More

Strawberry and Grape Grinch Hearts with Yogurt Fruit Dip

Posted December 21, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 2 Comments

 


Is this more of an appetizer than a side dish? Probably. As soon as I started planning my Grinch Who Stole Christmas menu, I knew I wanted to incorporate Grinch hearts, but I wasn’t exactly sure how. It wasn’t until early this past week that I decided on making fruit skewers with dip, and by then I’d already made Who Hash for my appetizer. So here they are as a side dish! In the end, all that matters is that they’re delicious, right? 😉

And they definitely ARE delicious—easy too! Just cut your strawberries into shape with a small heart cookie cutter and slice the ends off your grapes at an angle. Slide them on a skewer, and you’re done! The fruit dip is easy too. It’s got a tasty coconut yogurt base blended with cream cheese and honey for added creaminess and sweetness. It’s a sweet snack you can feel great about eating, Grinch or not!

Read More

The Grinch’s Who Hash: Sausage and Pepper Christmas Hash

Posted December 7, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 6 Comments

 


Hey, all! December is here at last and with it our final Book of the Month for 2017: The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. I’ve been looking forward to this menu for a long time, so let’s get started!

Our appetizer for this menu is Who Hash, which the Grinch steals from the icebox on Christmas Eve. Dr. Seuss doesn’t give a description of it, so I decided to use it as a chance to get creative!

It seems a little strange that a few months ago I’d never made hash in my life, and now I’ve made TWO hashes in as many months (you can check out my Stranger Things Pumpkin Hash here). I decided to make a pepper and sausage hash this time, with an eye towards making it different from the hash I made last month. This hash features juicy Italian sausages that have been cut into disks and sauteed in an iron skillet with onions, red potatoes, and Christmas-y red and green bell peppers. It’s bright and satisfying with a bit of a kick—I can see why the Grinch would like it! 😉

Read More

Sugar Plums

Posted December 22, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 3 Comments

       

 

Ok, you probably knew this was coming. We’re making a Nutcracker menu, so there’s gotta be sugar plums, right? Of course right! 🙂

Full Disclosure: When I first started planning this menu, I actually had no idea what a sugar plum was. I assumed it was dried plum that had been rehydrated in wine and rolled in sugar (which sounds delicious). But as it turns out, “sugar plum” is kind of a misnomer. It CAN involve plums, but it doesn’t have to. And they’re rarely the main ingredient.

Traditional sugar plums are hard candies that have been colored purple and surround a nut or spice. But there are also “Byzantine sugar plums,” which are made of a mix of chopped nuts, dried fruit, various spices, and sweetener (usually sugar or honey). This is the kind we’ll be making today.

Though I found lots of good recipes online, I decided to go with a slight variation on one by Bryt from Food in Literature since it had one of the shorter ingredient lists and her dried fruit combo sounded delicious (plums, apricots, and dates—oh my!).

So eat up, sugar plum fairies! We’ve got some dancing to do! 🙂

Read More

Nutcracker Christmas Tea

Posted December 6, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Teas / 2 Comments

photo-1426260193283-c4daed7c2024

When planning my Nutcracker tea, I knew I wanted to go with something nut-flavored, but I had a TON of options in that regard. Almond? Hazelnut? Mocha Nut Mate? In the end I decided to make a nod to my roasted chestnut recipe and go the chestnut route. And to make things just a little more festive, I added some of Adagio Tea’s custom gingerbread tea to the mix. Enjoy! 🙂

Read More

Roasted Chestnuts from The Nutcracker!

Posted December 1, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 11 Comments

 

nutcracker-roasted-chestnuts-ap-pinterest

 

This month we’re making a menu for a play: The Nutcracker! The story is so well-known and beloved that I knew it would be downright sinful to pass up the chance to make a menu for it. Plus, what better way to get in the mood for Christmas than with some Nutcracker food?

When I was brainstorming Christmasy, Nutcracker-themed recipes, roasted chestnuts sprang to mind almost immediately. I’d never made roasted chestnuts before planning this menu, so I was really excited to try them. There’s a little bit of a trick to making them easy to peel, but the warm, savory nuts inside are well worth the extra effort.

P.S. I used a method outlined on Tori Avey’s blog, which you can check out here.

Read More

Jo’s Christmas Gingerbread: Little Gingerbread Women

Posted December 24, 2015 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 8 Comments

I mentioned in my first Little Women post that Jo celebrates Christmas while living away from home for the very first time. She loves New York but is a little homesick…until a box of homemade gifts arrives from home, delicious bits of crunchy gingerbread among them! This recipe from Taste of Home is jut the sort of sweet, fragrant, gently spicy cookie that would warm my heart and lift my spirits if I were Jo March. And to make them even more in keeping with our Little Women theme, I decided to decorate my cookies to look like the March sisters!

Read More

Baked Apples

Posted December 17, 2015 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 3 Comments


No fruit or vegetable appears more often in
Little Women than apples. They’re Jo’s go-to reading snack, and the final chapter is even set in the Bhaers’ apple orchard. In honor of Jo’s apples, I decided to make my own interpretation of baked apples, which pairs well with our turkey roulade and has enough sweet-savory balance to work as a side dish or dessert. Plus, it’s got those cozy, subtle spice flavors that fit so well in a Christmas menu!

Read More

Hannah’s Muffs: Sweet Potato Apple Bacon Turnovers

Posted December 3, 2015 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 11 Comments


December is here, and with it all the trappings of Christmas. Since I moved in early November and didn’t get a chance to decorate for Halloween, I was determined not to let that happen for Christmas. On the first night of Advent, I set the lights low, turned on a CD of Christmas hymns, and finished almost all my decorating in one night (I saved the tree for the next day). I was so ready for it, and it was actually really relaxing. I even found that it has been a lot easier to remember the “reason for the season,” I guess because it gave me a chance to think about why I was decorating. I know I won’t always get that, so I was grateful to have it this year.

Read More

Scrooge’s Christmas Humbugs: Mint Hard Candies

Posted December 25, 2014 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 1 Comment


Given the classic Victorian theme of our menu thus far, you might have been expecting Christmas pudding for dessert, and I’ll admit I considered it. However, I couldn’t get Scrooge’s favorite exclamation off my mind. I knew I’d probably have many opportunities to make Christmas pudding on the site, but how many books can claim a connection to humbug candies?

Read More