Overnight Pecan Rolls

Noelle brought this one to us and we have often had it Christmas morning.

1 cup chopped pecans
18 frozen bread dough rolls (Rhodes)
1 3-ounce package butterscotch pudding (not instant)
½ cube butter
¾ cup brown sugar
¾ teaspoon cinnamon

Grease Bundt pan and spread nuts in bottom. Sprinkle dry pudding over dough in pan. Melt butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon together and pour over dough. Leave uncovered overnight (8 hours). Bake 25-30 minutes at 350°. Turn out, upside down, onto plate immediately after taking out of oven.

Pumpkin Waffles

This is from Noelle’s friend Camille Conrad. The Conrads have this on General Conference Sundays.

Waffles
2 cups flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon salt
4 eggs, separated
1½ cups milk
1 cup pumpkin
¾ cup margarine
1 tablespoon vanilla

Combine first 6 ingredients. Separate the eggs and beat the yolks slightly. Add the milk, pumpkin, margarine and vanilla. Add the flour mixture. Fold egg whites into pumpkin mixture and then bake in waffle iron.

Buttermilk Syrup
1 cube butter
1 cup sugar
½ cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon Karo syrup
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine first 4 ingredients. Bring to a boil in extra large pan. Remove from heat and sir in baking soda and vanilla. Mixture will fizz to twice its height. Let set, stirring occasionally until fizz is gone. Serve hot over pumpkin waffles.

Candy Cane Cookies

Colin made up this recipe for Christmas 2008, based on a couple of pastel cookie recipies he found online. They taste about halfway between a sugar cookie and a butter cookie.

1 cup butter
1⅓ cups fine granulated sugar
2 large eggs
4 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
3¼ cups flour
food coloring
optional: other flavorings, such as peppermint extract, and colored decorators' sugar or crushed peppermint candies.

Cream the butter and the sugar thoroughly. Mix in the eggs and milk. Add the vanilla. Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder together in a bowl, then mix a bit at a time into the wet ingredients.

Take the dough and divide it into two parts. Take one part and mix in some food coloring (red or green look traditional) and optionally some flavoring such as 1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract. Chill dough covered in the refrigerator for two hours.

Take some chilled dough in roughly equal parts of each color, and roll into fat rods of equal length, then stick the rods together and roll out the combined rod to about 3/8" (1cm) diameter. Pinch off about 5-6" (120 - 150cm) and twist (rolling the ends about the center clockwise seems to work well). Roll or dust in colored sugar or crushed candy and form into a candy cane shape or a ring and place on a baking sheet.

Bake at 350° F (175° C) for 10 - 12 minutes. The cookies should not be noticeably browned. Leave the baked cookies on the cookie sheet for a couple of minutes to cool before transferring to a cooling rack - the cookies can be fragile. Makes about four dozen.

It's pretty easy to make other holiday shapes with this recipe, too, like these flags or candy corns:

Holiday Nougat Cookies

2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup vegetable shortening (Crisco - don't substitute margarine or butter!)
1½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup unsalted roasted cashews, lightly chopped (or an alternative)

Combine the powdered sugar, shortening, flour, vanilla and salt in a stand mixer at medium speed, scraping down the sides occasionally, until well blended. Mix in the chopped cashews, but do not over-mix. Chill the dough slightly, then flatten it to about half an inch on a cool surface and cut out small circles, 1 to 1½ inches in diameter. Place about an inch apart on a baking sheet. Bake at 325° for 13-15 minutes. The cookies should not brown much, if at all.

This is essentially a copycat Archway Cashew Nougat cookie recipe. Stores in this area used to sell them during the holiday season, but I haven't seen them for years. I searched the internet, but the most commonly linked recipe is really a variety of Mexican Wedding cookie, which is all wrong. This recipe is a tweaked version of Norma's Divinity Cookies that seems closer to the packaged product. Another alternative recipe is Smitty's Divinity Cookies, but I haven't tried that one yet. Cashews are not required; this recipe works equally well plain, or with other chopped nuts, crushed candy cane pieces, toffee bits, cinnamon imperials, chocolate chips, mint chips, cherry chips, cinnamon chips, or butterscotch chips. A bit of food coloring can also be used for variety.

Norma's original recipe calls for 5.25 cups of powdered sugar (1.5 pounds), 2.5 cups of shortening, and 4 cups of flour. Smitty's calls for 2 cups of powdered sugar, 1 "heaping" cup of shortening, and 2 cups of cake flour.