Fire and Ice or Naughty and Nice

It’s that time of year again! Aren’t you excited? Sleigh bells ringing, snow falling, sugarplums (what the heck are sugar plums anyway, and why all the dancing?), peace and goodwill toward all etc. etc. (You thought I was going to say it’s Halloween time didn’t you? For the rest of the world it is, but for those of us who are epic Christmas cookie bakers, it’s also the time where the kitchen needs to heat up and start cranking out the seasonal sweetness. Fudge, candy, cookies, truffles, it’s a virtual smorgasbord of mmmmmmmmm….. 😉 ). I will most definitely not be doing a post for everything I make because that just sounds like too daunting a task (and I don’t even think there’s enough weeks left before Christmas anyway). I’m going to try and stick to doing ones for anything I’m doing that’s not part of my usual fare, aka new (to me at least), or else anything that I deem interesting enough to include. I’m really doing this for all of you – I know that none of you want to spend the next two months reading about Christmas (and I don’t want to spend the next couple of months writing about it either. How many Christmas puns can a person be expected to make??!! ….that’s a lie, that’s the most “oh what fun it is” part 😉 ). Besides, I think I’ll just go ahead and leave it to the professionals, aka the world of consumerism, to provide you with your requite seasonal overload. If you’re really jonesing for some Christmas, feel free to head over to you local mall or Starbucks and you will have all the Christmas a person can take starting today (and sadly, in many places, Christmas has already been in full swing for months 🙁 ).

Anywho, enough about that, let’s move on to the actual sugar bomb at hand shall we? These patties, which I am christening “Fire and Ice Patties”, are technically new this year, but really just an expanded riff on my usual Peppermint patties. I basically split my dough in half and infused one half with peppermint oil and the other half with cinnamon oil. Then I turned each into one inch round patties, smooshed one of each type together, and then dipped all that goodness in chocolate. I think they’re delicious, but I admittedly have the biggest crush on cinnamon (It sets my heart on fire, but not in a heartburn kind of way, more in a “warm the cockles of my heart” kind of way. Again with the old fashioned verbiage Amber? Seriously, get a modernized dictionary or next thing you know you’ll be calling this “ye olde bloge poste”) and have yet to find something in which it does not taste delicious. Case in point – whenever Kevin and I make homemade pasta sauce we’ll often add a touch of cinnamon, so I’m not just referring to sweet things here. The only “downside” of these is that the cinnamon oil I used was pretty intense and I ended up not having quite the even balance/ ratio of mint to cinnamon that I was hoping for. Kevin brilliantly suggested to me that I should add peppermint oil/ extract to the chocolate I’m dipping them in to up the “coolness” factor 😉 . His brilliance unfortunately did not extend to creating a time machine in which he makes this suggestion before I finished making 70+ of these 🙁 . I’m generous enough however to share this plan with you so that you at least can make a better version of these.

As we head further and further away from summer (booo!!!!!), these are the perfect pick-me-ups to warm your heart and also to cool your winter rage (or is that just me? – replace “cloud” here with “winter” and I think this image perfectly represents me. Even the likeness is pretty close 😉 ):

I legitimately do embrace my inner old man in a lot of ways actually. Last winter when it was way too cold for me to talk myself into going outside for a walk in the morning, I totally became a mall walker. Yes, the stereotype is completely true. I think I was the only non-retired person doing this. Everyone was super friendly to me though. I’m sure I also created a huge uptick in the number of eye doctor appointments since they probably thought they couldn’t be seeing me right 😉 (Note to all Pickering area eye doctors – if you feel like giving me a cut, I will graciously accept 😉 ). I have also found myself going on long convoluted rants about how technology is taking over, and everyone’s on their phone all the time (Kevin thinks I might just be a Luddite….he would be right). I like to think of it as practicing for my old age. All I really need now is a hearing aid, a pair of old man pants and to start eating dinner at 4:30pm, so I’m well on my way (jealous?).