Never again will you be buying an expensive store-bought Honey Baked Ham - once you have discovered how amazingly simple it is to make one at home!  The sweet honey glaze is perfect on a hickory-smoked spiral-cut ham, slow-cooked and so moist - perfect for a special holiday!

​Not only will you save time and money, but you'll have the BEST honey glazed baked ham that you have ever had - so moist and flavorful!  Wanna know my secret? 

I'm going to let you in on a little holiday tradition - one that is always on our table for Christmas dinner, and usually the New Year too!  Glazed Apples & Cranberries are perfect with your holiday ham or pork tenderloin.  If you love apple pie, you will LOVE all of the tart and sweet apple slices, with the sweet tang of fresh cranberries, in a light and perfect glaze.

​So quick and simple to make, when this is baking alongside your Holiday Ham, the aroma wafting around the house is out-of-this-world!  And the tender sweet apple slices?  So good that everyone will be gobbling them up fast!

How can it possibly be the end of the year already?  Each year seems to fly by faster and faster, and I really need to slow down and enjoy each day for the opportunity it gives me and the memories it leaves me! 

​The kiddos are on their last week of winter break, so we'll try and sneak one more slow and lazy, wonderful breakfast before the new year begins.  One of our favorite breakfast casseroles is Eggnog French Toast Casserole, which has a wonderful little surprise!  Unlike traditional Eggnog French Toast or other breakfast casseroles, this little beauty bakes with caramel on the bottom - and after taking it hot out of the oven, I flip it over so that the caramel soaks down through every layer of the rich eggnog custard French toast.  Perfect for a special day or just for celebrating a quiet morning together.

Merry Christmas!  Wishing you peace and love to warm your heart this blessed holiday season, and days filled with magic, laughter, good health, good memories and cheer!

Today we'll be celebrating with our favorite Christmas brunch - this Holiday Ham & Cheese Quiche is insanely rich and delicious, and just perfect with our family-favorite holiday breads (fresh Banana Bread, Chocolate Chip Banana Bread and Date Nut Bread) and fresh raspberries and strawberries.  With a flaky crust, a rich and creamy custard filling that is bursting with ham and melted cheese, it's quiche perfection, and the best you'll ever have!

And this is a morning to linger, savor and enjoy every single minute with our family!

Ahhhhhh.....the delightful little Holiday Meatball!  Never has something so bite-sized been so perfect!  A holiday tradition for generations, and no one will allow me to deviate from the original recipe.  I guess when you have perfection, why try to reinvent the wheel?  Perfectly sized, perfectly simple, and perfectly saucy - just the way we like it!

​There are absolutely hundreds of sauce recipes out there for meatballs, but the combination of Welch's Grape Jelly and our favorite barbeque sauce is the one we go back to time after time.  On our trips back to Minneapolis, one of our favorite restaurants is Rudolph's Barbeque & Grill, and we always bring back a dozen or so bottles of their wonderful barbeque sauce to hideaway and save for special occasions.  That means Christmas, New Years and Holiday Meatballs!

I don't use the word "ultimate" frequently, so when I do, you know it's something special!  For those of us that grew up loving traditional Magic Seven Layer Bars, we've taken these to a new level!  Several of my kiddos request these every holiday season, and I never liked the way the crust was so dry and crumbly - and let's face it, they are just plain messy to eat - graham cracker crumbs EVERYWHERE!

​The creative solution to that was to bake up a tender, soft-baked brown sugar and graham cracker cookie crust!  No more crumbly graham cracker and butter crust for us, And once you try this soft, thick and chewy bar, you'll be swooning too!

It can't be Christmas at our house until the Angel Meringues are baked and waiting!  When my little ones were little, they always called these "Angel Cookies", because they reminded them of angels and clouds...and the name has stuck!  Whether you're a lover of angels or clouds, marshmallows or cotton candy, these little puffs are filled with nothing but fun and sweet memories! 

​We've made a gazillion variations of flavors and colors throughout the years, but I'm sharing our favorites with you today!  And unless we're making these to drop into a steaming hot mug of creamy hot chocolate (they melt just like a marshmallow but are so much for fun) or a glass of champagne (Champagne Meringues are even more sparkly and bubbly that you can imagine), we ALWAYS dip them in chocolate!  So simple to make, these are some of our favorite flavors...
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Simple.  And so wonderful!  Marshmallow Meringue Stars are everything you want a meringue cookie to be - fluffy, light, crunchy on the outside, soft and the tiniest bit chewy on the inside, and filled with pure vanilla flavor!

​These little treats have a little secret - we added some mini-chocolate chips to the meringue just before we baked them.  You can leave them out of course, but they are sure a nice little surprise when you take your first bite!

Just imagine a bite-sized Chocolate Meringue Star...dipped in dark chocolate!  If you're looking for something fabulous for Christmas, and you love chocolate, these may be your new favorite! 

​And for an extra-decadent treat, drop one on top of a hot steaming cup of creamy cocoa...it will melt away slowly....you can even add to a cup of hot coffee for a fabulous mocha coffee flavor! 

Today I saved the best for last...Chocolate-Dipped Meringue Mint Chocolate Stars!  If you love mint chocolate chip ice cream or Andes mints, you will adore these little bites of mint chocolate bliss!

​Delicate peppermint flavor, a little mini-chocolate chip surprise inside, and drizzled with dark chocolate - how can something so simple be so YUMMY?

Is your house starting to fill with excitement?  Everyone seems to be counting down the days until Christmas finally arrives, and my holiday baking is in full swing.  At least it was, until I discovered that we've had some serious candy cane thievery going on!  Our little ones absolutely LOVE candy canes - and they discovered my secret stash! 

​These sweet little cookies taste even more wonderful than they look!  Chewy, fudgy brownie cookies made fresh from scratch, and then filled with a silky smooth peppermint white chocolate filling and sprinkled with crushed candy canes.  I've made Peppermint Bark Brownie Bites, Peppermint Meltaway Cookies, Double Chocolate Peppermint Bark, White Chocolate & Peppermint Chocolate Sugar Cookies, and Ultimate Grasshopper Cookies, and my kiddos still can't get enough chocolate and peppermint! 

This crazy mama is making 24 different cookies, candies and treats for her holiday cookie trays - we're sharing with lots of neighbors and family friends this year!  I have a super secret ulterior motive as well...I'm making Christmas Holiday Cookbooks for each of my kiddos and siblings.  I have a notebook for each holiday, and keep my recipes and notes there for convenience the next year.  As much as I love my Kindle Fire, there's just something about a paper recipe in front of me that I can scribble notes on if I need to. 

Chewy brownie cookies, gooey caramel filling, fresh pecans and a drizzle of dark chocolate ganache - what's not to love about these little cookies?  Fabulous any time of the year, but especially nice on a tray of Christmas cookies!

Every Christmas and Valentine's Day we would always look forward to my Mom's old-fashioned sugar cookies.  She made DOZENS of these every year and they have always been a family favorite!  My Dad loved them, my brothers and sister loved them, EVERYONE raved about how wonderful her sugar cookies tasted!

​From the time that they were little my kiddos have loved these soft and tender sugar cookies better than any other!  Probably because it was the first cookie for each of them...

​I was one of those crazy moms that didn't give my little ones any refined sugar until their first birthday.  And Mom would always make it a special event by baking up a batch of these and giving them a simple sprinkle of sparkling sugar on top.  Perfectly simple, perfectly wonderful!

Is there anything more old-fashioned and fun than biting the head off of a gingerbread man?  And when they are as thick, soft and chewy as these wonderful little gingerbread people, you'll see why these have been a family favorite for generations! 

​Filled with every flavor that makes gingerbread cookies wonderful - butter, brown sugar, molasses, cinnamon, cloves, allspice and LOTS of ginger!  And whether you like these plain or happily frosted with Easy Royal Icing, these little guys are ALWAYS fun to eat! 

Outside the snow is falling and friends are calling my name....inside it's the perfect time for a little Ultimate Grasshopper Cookie!  This is the cookie-version of our family-favorite Mint Brownies (often fondly referred to as "Starbucks Brownies"), a very special treat usually made only for Christmas and St. Patrick's Day! 

​A soft and chewy brownie cookie base, topped with Mint Buttercream Frosting, drizzled with Chocolate Ganache and topped with chunks of Andes Mints? SO MINTY GOOD!