Year End Gifts

I made the kids year end gifts for their teachers last weekend because they have one more day next Monday, but our weekend is way too full for me to get it done. Shockingly, I planned ahead for once instead of staying up til 10pm finishing them. Instead, I worked on them until 8pm tonight. Apparently I still need to work on my planning skills.

I am pretty pleased how they turned out. I did a version of my Valentine's buckets that I have made in the past. This time I made them easier on myself. I eliminated the frosted butter cookie and dipped store bought marshmallows instead of homemade ones. However, Murphy and his stupid law had to show up to keep things from running completely smoothly, and allowing me to get an inflated ego. So thank you for that, Murphy.

The first thing I made were dipped oreo cookies that looked like an apple. I found them on Pinterest and they were super cute and seemed very easy. They were the bane of my existence on Sunday. Unfortunately I tried 3 different types of sticks, but the cookies kept breaking and then I kept cursing them. I googled them and found a site that gave me a trick to get the sticks in without breaking them. Then I wrestled with the "leaves." I found some green Now & Later's that apparently my kids were saving for "later" from Halloween. I could have really used a third hand to get them on the "apple", but I managed to succeed with two.

Aren't they pretty cute?

The second thing I made was the ganache for the truffle pops. Sigh. How can two ingredients create something so sinfully delicious? I made it the same way I have always made it, but after the ganache had chilled it was much too soft to roll. I wasn't sure if it was because it was so hot outside or if something went wrong. I decided to see what happened if I melted it back down and added more chocolate to thicken it. Thank goodness it worked or else I would've had a breakdown.

The last major bummer was today. I dipped the marshmallows yesterday after I dipped the truffles. Apparently when I reheated the chocolate it got out of temper, so when I got home today i discovered they were all swirly. Ugh. I didn't feel like dealing with chocolate melting again, so I decided to come up with a new kind of marshmallow. I flavored some almond bark with peppermint oil and then dipped them in crushed candy canes. Halfway through I decided to crush some dark chocolate chips too, so a couple of the teachers will get those--they are slightly luckier :)

I stuck them in some floral foam in the buckets and tucked a small giftcard to Dunkin Donuts in, and called it a day. I am kind of annoyed that the pictures didn't turn out great, but apparently we live in a cave with no light. That, and it's 8:00 at night, so there really isn't any light anywhere :) But trust me, they were really cute--it's a good thing I have Murphy to keep me from being cocky.