Baking for Christmas

Yesterday I did some baking for Christmas. I made gingerbread men and pecan pie. Used a box mix for the gingerbread men and I made the pecan pie based on a recipe from Cooking Light.

For the gingerbread men I used Arrowhead Mills Organic Gingerbread Cookie Mix. I substituted the molasses with maple syrup. I decorated the cookies with a little icing. The results were fabulous: everyone said they were much softer and tastier than they had expected a gingerbread cookie to be. Super!

Cooking Light’s recipe can be found here: http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=780352. I like this recipe; I used it first for the first time for Thanksgiving. My family is an apple pie family. For thanksgiving we have apple and pumpkin, but this year I added a new one and everyone liked it. But that time I didn’t make the crust, I used one my mom had made. Both times I didn’t make spiked cream they way they suggest. I used whipping cream, which I whipped by hand and then spiked that with Maker’s Mark. This time, I switched the ratio of brown rice syrup to maple syrup and made their pie crust. Wonderful! The crust is sweet and the lemon juice is a delightful hint of flavor. This recipe is a hit, I will make it again and again!