When you have a crowd coming for Christmas, it helps to have lots of tasty dishes that are easy to make. in this 1995 show, Arlene has a great spread of fast and delicious things you can make for your friends this holiday. If you don’t want to make a whole stuffed turkey, her turkey and stuffing ring has all those classic flavors in one dish! Plus, her holiday English trifle is always a dessert favorite.
NOTE: Unfortunately, we have not been unable to find all the recipes from this program. For the Christmas cookies seen in this program, click here.
Holiday English Trifle
This dessert looks fancy, but it comes together in just minutes with easy ingredients!
Ingredients
- 3 cups cold milk
- 2 boxes instant chocolate pudding mix (large size boxes)
- 1 container whipped topping (8 oz)
- 1 prepared chocolate and yellow marbled cake (9×9")
- 1 bag miniature toffee bits
- 3/4 cup chocolate syrup
Instructions
- Prepare instant pudding, using 3 cups of cold milk. Let sit 5 minutes. Gently fold whipped topping into the chocolate pudding.
- Cut cake into 1 inch cubes. (You can use store-bought cake or bake your own.) Layer half of the cake cubes into a large bowl or trifle dish. Drizzle with 1/4 cup of chocolate syrup. Sprinkle with 1/3rd of toffee bits. Spread half of pudding mixture on top.
- Repeat process, building a second layer of cake, syrup, toffee, and pudding. Sprinkle top with more toffee and drizzle with remaining syrup. Cool in the fridge at least one hour. Enjoy!
Green Beans Au Gratin
A classic vegetable casserole that goes great with a wide variety of meals.
Ingredients
- 4 tbsp melted butter
- 2 tbsp flour
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 tsp minced dried onion
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp ground black pepper
- 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
- 3 cans french-style green beans, drained
- 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
- 1 cup cracker crumbs
- 1 tbsp sesame seeds
- 2 tbsp melted butter
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk all ingredients except beans until combined. Stir in beans until fully coated. Pour into a 7×11" casserole dish. Sprinkle top with Parmesan cheese until fully covered.
- Combine melted butter, cracker crumbs, and sesame seeds, then spread over top of casserole.
- Bake in a 350 degree oven for 35-40 minutes. Allow to cool for 5 minutes before serving. Enjoy!
- NOTE: Frozen green beans can be used, but they should be cooked and drained, first.
Fruited Sweet Potatoes
This combination of sweet potatoes and apples is a classic.
Ingredients
- 2 cans yams in syrup (17 oz, each)
- 1 can apple pie filling (15 oz)
- 1 cup pineapple chunks (drained)
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 cup orange marmalade
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a small pot over low heat, combine marmalade, cinnamon, and brown sugar, and stir until combined and the marmalade has melted.
- Drain yams and spread into a single layer in a small, buttered casserole dish. Spoon apple pie filling on top of sweet potatoes. Spread pineapple on top of apples. Drizzle melted marmalade mixture over entire dish. Bake for 30 minutes. Allow to cool 5 minutes before serving. Enjoy!
Turkey and Dressing Ring
This pretty main dish serves a lot of people and it's easy to make!
Ingredients
- 1 lb ground turkey sausage (uncooked)
- 2 packages herb seasoned stuffing mix
- 1/2 cup chopped bell pepper
- 1/2 cup onion
- 1 can corn, drained
- 1/2 cup chopped pecans
- 2 eggs
- 1 can condensed cream of celery soup
- 1 lb deli turkey breast, sliced
- 1 can whole berry cranberry sauce
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a large bundt pan. Whisk eggs and soup together until well blended. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix well, breaking up any large chunks.
- Layer about half of stuffing mixture into greased bunt pan. Layer slices of deli turkey around mixture. Cover turkey slices with the remaining stuffing mixture.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes. Carefully turn stuffing ring out onto a serving platter, and immediately cover with cranberry sauce. The heat should cause the sauce to melt and run down the sides, covering the ring. Enjoy!
Chicken Wings Casserole
These tasty wings use a secret ingredient: tomato soup
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup cooking or frying oil (plus extra, if needed)
- 1 Tbs cooking oil (separate)
- 2 lbs chicken wings
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 Tbs celery seed
- 1 Tbs soy sauce
- 1/4 cup white or apple cider vinegar
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 1 small can condensed tomato soup (10.75 oz)
- 1/2 tsp salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
- In a deep skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat until hot but not smoking (about 350-375 degrees, measured with a thermometer). Brown chicken wings in hot oil, cooking on both sides for about 5-10 minutes total. Drain wings on paper towels, then place in casserole dish.
- In a bowl, whisk remaining ingredients (including 1 Tbs of oil), and pour mixture over wings. Bake in a preheated oven, covered, for 2 hours. Enjoy!
Transcript
- Well, Merry Christmas to one and all. We’re so glad that you’re with us today. It’s Christmas. I’m sure that your house must be just buzzing now with the children and the paper and the gifts. And I hope you’re having a wonderful day. Merry Christmas from our home to you. And I hope it’s a blessed day for you and your family, a day when you just reach out and put your arms around each child and in-laws and cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents, everybody that drops by. Just let the love flow today because this is the day that we celebrate the birth of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. His name is Jesus. And we just want you to see our beautiful Christmas tree. I can’t tell you. This is such a homey tree and it’s from Crafter Showcase. We just appreciate those folks so much. All the decorations are from them and we just thank them so much for loaning them to us so that we could bring you a really festive feeling when you saw At Home today. Well, hang in there because today we’re doing our Christmas buffet and you’re gonna see some unusual things, some different things, and I hope some delicious things. We’ll be right back to get it all started in just a moment, so stay tuned. Stay with us now. The staff and crew of At Home wishes to thank our sponsors for their continued support of our program throughout 1995. Jordan Banana Company. Foodland. Dacor Distinctive Appliances. Nordstrom’s. Happy holidays, sponsors. Thank you. Well, just as a reminder, you know, we started a tradition a few years ago. Here’s our Happy Birthday Jesus birthday cake. Don’t forget, if you did it for your children. Remember, you have to have one today. It’s his birthday, right? And what would a birthday be without a birthday cake? So we’ve got one made for the Lord. And its great, it’s a teaching tool for your children, and I hope that you’ll do it. Well, the first thing we’re gonna be putting together today is our holiday english trifle. Now what I have in this pan, in this bowl, is 3 cups of cold milk and 2 of the 4 serving size instant chocolate pudding. And you have to let it sit for five minutes. That’s why we went ahead and did it before you got here, because now what we’re gonna do is add a container, an 8 ounce container, of Cool Whip. We’re gonna fold that into the chocolate pudding. All right. Isn’t it great? What a wonderful day. I hope that your house is just full of levity and fun and frolic and the kids having a good time with the things that they’ve received as gifts and I hope nobody got left out. I hope somebody got something for everybody. And I hope it’s just a time when you’ll spend reflecting on the goodness that’s in your life. What God’s done for you. And how that, you know, the other people in the country, and in the world that are less fortunate than we, but God has been good to us. And I hope that someone’s at your house today that maybe doesn’t have family. Doesn’t have a lot of people around them. Maybe an aunt or an uncle that maybe would be lonely if you hadn’t invited them. I hope that you’ve thought about that today cause that’s what makes Christmas very, very special. All right, we’ve just folded in the Cool Whip and now what we’re gonna do is take a trifle bowl, now you can do it in a clear glass bowl, and this is a loaf cake. It’s a marble loaf cake. And we’ve just cut it into squares and we’re gonna put about half of the amount we have here in the bottom of our trifle dish. Whoops, sorry about that. And then, on top of that, we’re going to put, now these are Heath bars. Remember the english toffee Heath bars? Remember when you were a kid, how good they tasted? Well, we’re going to take these, and you have to crumble them up. It’s really important that you crumble them up or put them in the food processor just to chop them up. Take a hammer in a plastic bag, crack them up a little bit. Get those ready because you’re going to take 1/4 cup of chocolate syrup and you’re going to drizzle that over the top of those cubes of the loaf cake. You can bake your own or you can make someone to go the store to get you one real quick because that’s probably the easiest way. All right? Then we’re gonna add some of our candy bars. About half of them. All right? Just like that. Now were going to take our pudding. And if you’ve got a chocolatey family and they love chocolate this is the one that they’re gonna want. And you put half, you do half of your total pudding mixture. Let’s see, there we go. It’s coming along. This has to refrigerate for about an hour for it to really gel and to set and to taste really, really good. Because you want it to get cold. You say, well Arlene, you know, this is Christmas and I didn’t get your recipes, or I’m not making it today. Well, that’s all right. You’ll be entertaining throughout the holidays. Just go ahead and make it later. It’s okay, no problem. No problem at all. All right? I think that’s about it. Now, what were going to do is take again, the rest of our loaf, marble loaf, cake. Sprinkle it around, just like that. Again, we do the chocolate syrup over the bread, or the cake cubes not the bread. Looks like bread cubes to me for some reason. Like a pumpernickel and white bread. And we just add some more of our Heath bars crunched up. Isn’t it nice to spend the day with your family? You know what you don’t have done isn’t gonna get done and now you can just kick back and relax and enjoy the holiday. I’m always glad when I get to this point because until you do it gets to be a real rat race. And I know that every year I think it’s not gonna be that way but somehow something happens to keep me from keeping my promise. Cause I just feel, I put such demands on myself to get everything done. So, by now, if it’s not done, it’s not gonna get done. And just gonna kick back and enjoy the day. So we’re finishing up putting the topping, this is the last layer, of the pudding. And we’ll smooth it all out. Just like that. Now, what you could do, if you wanted to, you could put some, some more Cool Whip, the plain white Cool Whip on there if you wanted to. But what I’m gonna do is just put another layer of the english toffee bars, the Heath bars, right on the top, just like that. Something’s impressive. And you know, it wasn’t hard, was it? Not at all. Made it just a few minutes. We’ll just use it all, right there. And you’re gonna put this in the refrigerator, which I’m going to do, and this needs to chill for about an hour to make it really taste good. Okay, well, that’s one down. Now the next we’re gonna be making, we’ve got to get on with our vegetables. We’re having a buffet, it’s gonna have, it’s called a turkey dressing ring. And it’s a wonderful turkey and dressing, all in a ring you make in a Bundt pan, I’m gonna show you how to do that in just a moment. But first we want to do our vegetables. And the one is green beans au gratin. And in this bowl I’m going to take 2 tablespoons of melted butter, almost melted butter here, there we go. 2 tablespoons. And 2 tablespoons, I’m sorry, it was 4 tablespoons of butter, 2 tablespoons of flour, 1 cup, was 2? Okay. 1 cup of sour cream, it’s supposed to be 4. Okay? And some minced onion. This is a teaspoon of minced onion. It’s dried onion, that was. 1 teaspoon of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, this is a 1/4 teaspoon of ground black pepper, and this is some ground red pepper, about 1/8 teaspoon. We’re gonna mix this together, just like this, and this is the au gratin part of the green beans. Mix it up, okay? And we’re gonna put 3 cans of french style, that’s the french cut, that’s the long skinny bean, okay? 3 of those, drained, into this mixture. Mix it up, and have a casserole, this calls for a 7×11 inch casserole, it’s nice to have that greased and sitting, you grease that with butter or Pam or whatever you want to spray on that, just nice to have that ready before you get started. And I would probably mix that a little bit more but for time we’re gonna go ahead and put it into our baking dish. Now, we need to preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Really important to do that. Cause you don’t want to have the oven waiting, the food waiting on the oven to get ready. So we get rid of that. Spread them out, just like that. So easy. Nothing to it. All right? Now what we’re gonna mix together is, get something else here to mix this together, this is Parmesan cheese that we’re gonna sprinkle across the top. Just like that. And this calls for a cup. This is the au gratin, au gratin means cheesy, I guess that’s what it means, but that’s, every time I see au gratin I think that’s what it means, there’s cheese in it. And we’re gonna take some butter crackers, we’ve used Ritz, and you make them into crumbs and you add some sesame seeds and you add, this is 2 tablespoons, of melted butter. Okay? And if this was liquid it would be better. It gels in the studio here, but that’s okay, the butter flavor will still be in the crackers because we’ve already, they’re butter flavored to begin with. Just turn that around there. And we’re gonna just sprinkle this all across the top, and this will go into a 350 degree oven. This will bake from 35-40 minutes. And green beans probably never had this kind of treatment before, probably never tastes as good as this does. Because this is just something, wow, you know, it’s just easy to put on a buffet, easy to make for your friends, your family, anytime, but particularly at Christmas time. When you don’t want to have to dilly dally around the oven, around the stove, fixing. And you know, you want to put it in there, forget about it, 35-40 minutes it’s ready. While we put this in the oven, we’re gonna take a break and be right back with our turkey dressing ring. One of the dishes that I’m going to show you here, I’m not going to demonstrate, but all the recipes are in our Christmas booklet for At Home, this is called, these look wonderful, these are casserole chicken wings. And these bake for 2 hours, at 325, and you make the most wonderful barbecue sauce with a can of tomato soup. These are incredible. You’re gonna want to be sure to get the recipe for them. Well, we’re gonna make some fruited sweet potatoes now. And so I can get these in the oven and get them baking you want two cans, 17 ounce cans, of the yams. Drain them real well, butter your casserole, and then just lay them in there. Important to do that. Okay? I hear something bubbling back there and I don’t want any trouble there later. Okay, so, now we have them all in a single layer, just put them, as much as you can, in a single layer in your casserole dish. That’s good. Now, what we do next, is we put some apple, this is apple pie filling or topping that you buy in a can, and we’re gonna spoon the apples over top of the yams. Doesn’t that look good? Different and unusual, you can even put some raisins in this if you wanted to. This is just something, we’re treating yams just a little different. Mom always made the candied sweet potatoes, and I’ll tell you what, if she was here I wouldn’t complain one bit I’d just have her keep making em cause they taste great. But, sometimes we just want a little something different. And I like the idea of the fruit like this. All right? Next we’re gonna put some chunks of pineapple. Now this is about a cup of pineapple chunks. This is what I like, fruited sweet potatoes. That’s why I like the name of them, because I like all of these good fruits that are going in there. And I think that the taste is going to be great. Put as much as you want, as few as you want, we particularly, we like a lot of pineapple. So were gonna add just a few more. Make sure everybody gets a taste of the pineapple chunks. And then what we do, we have some marmalade that I have had in the sauce pan cooking to thin down, and we’re gonna add some brown sugar, just a tablespoon of firmly packed brown sugar, whoops! And a little bit of cinnamon. Gonna add that to it. Mix it around. Okay? Now we’ll spoon this mixture over our whole, all the fruit that we’ve got in our casserole. I’ll tell you what, this is gonna be incredible. Doesn’t it smell good? This is so wonderful that we, you know, I feel like our family, our work family, my crew that works on At Home all the time is here and it’s just nice that they can be a part of Christmas with us today. Because I do feel like they’re family. I mean, they become a part of you, you work with them everyday, or see them everyday, and then when we’re in the studios they’re here with us and we appreciate the guys that make all of this possible because of the talents they have, that God’s given them. Helps them to be a part of our family. And we appreciate them very much. All right, this is going into a 350 degree oven. And this baby is gonna bake for about 30 minutes, okay? Doesn’t it look good? Looks good enough to eat, doesn’t it, as mom use to say. All right, so the beans are gone. All we have to do now is, I have to show you the bread. This is my Christmas tree bread. Isn’t it cute? All you do is take those little frozen, the texas rolls, and line them up across, just like that, let them raise according to the package directions, bring them out, when they’re ready to go into the oven, when they kind of grown together I’ll say, or raised together, then you bake them according to the package, about 12, 15 minutes. Bring them out, and some melted butter with dill, you just put that on top. And we’re gonna sprinkle some red, chopped red peppers, just to decorate with. See? This is a Christmas tree, you know. And some green, diced green peppers. And there you have Christmas. Simple and easy, but also nice. All right, now we’re gonna show you this turkey ring I’ve been telling you about. Cause this is really unique and unusual. And this calls for a pound of ground turkey sausage, which you get in the dairy case. It comes like a, like sausage, okay? We need a 1 pound pack of that, you need two 8 ounce packages of stuffing mix. Two packages of herb seasoned stuffing mix. We’ve got some pepper here. Here’s our chopped pepper, 1/2 a cup. 1/2 a cup of chopped frozen onion. Frozen onion, all right? Then we have a can of mexican corn that we’ve drained it real well. Just add all of this together. This is my kind of recipe, where you can just add it all together. And we have some pecans, about 1/2 cup of chopped, or not so chopped, but either way they’ll be okay, pecans. And I’m kidding Suzie, cause she said is that okay? I said sure. And then we have a can of cream of celery soup. Don’t water it down or milk it down. Just right out of the can, okay? Now well, I’m gonna explain to you in case we run out of time, what you really do here. We also have 2 eggs that go in here. One, you say don’t you mix all that stuff up? Yeah, you do. But not just yet. You really got to get in here and start mixing. That’s the key, okay? You mix it all together. Remember, this is gonna take a little bit of time. After you have this totally mixed up, and I mean everything mixed together very well, it’s just gonna look like this is nothing but stuffing, with a little bit of corn in it. Trust me, you have to mix very well cause you want to get the eggs in there because it has to hold it all together. And you mix it very, very well. When you’re done with that, then you take about, I would say about 2 cups, more or less, of this filling and you really, really grease your Bundt pan. And you fill, with this, filling, the dressing, filled up to about an inch from the bottom. Put about an inch layer of this in it. Then you take deli turkey just like this, it’s called the deli stye turkey breast, and you lay just layers right around on top of this dressing in this pan. And you use the whole pound, 1 pound in there, all right? If you have leftover turkey from Thanksgiving, the white meat, put pieces of that turkey in there. Then you’re gonna put the rest of this dressing on top of this pan, and it will come clear to the top. You’re gonna bake this in a preheated oven for about 60-65 minutes. And you’ll be amazed, it smells so wonderful. When you bring it out, and you immediately put it on your serving plate, and you take a can of whole berry canned cranberry sauce, and you can see it here, you put it on top and the heat of it just makes it melt. Almost looks like a Christmas wreath. When you serve this you slice slices down. You have your corn in there, you have the turkey, you have stuffing, it’s so easy. Great for a buffet. You can warm it up, it warms up in a microwave very, very easily. It’s just very, very tasty and I think it’s something you and your family are going to enjoy. We’re going to be back with a wrap up to our special special Christmas program in just a moment. Stay with us, now. Don’t you dare go away. To receive your At Home Christmas booklet with all the holiday recipes for the month of December, send a self addressed stamped business sized envelope, along with your very best gift, to At Home, 1205 Corner Stone Television, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. Send for your booklet today and begin your holiday menu planning. Happy Holidays, from At Home. Well, here we are, at our Christmas buffet table. And I hope that we’ve given you some ideas today. Stick with me now, I’m gonna try and take you on a little tour. Remember when we did the cookies? The last couple of weeks? Well, of course, you want to get some of those out and put them out on display. And there’s our Christmas Happy Birthday Jesus cake. And our little chocolate kiss cookies. We’ve mixed an apricot necator with some Sprite, lemon lime. That’s a neat drink, something different. Put a little piece of lime there. This is the apricot, uh this cake, apricot nut fruit cake, that has apricot nectar all over the top with marmalade. This is the moist cake, and you just keep, you know, basting it. Here is more of the cookies that we’ve done. There’s the shortbread. Here’s our english , holiday english trifle. Doesn’t it look beautiful? We just added a few cherries to the top. And here is a, this is our, um it’s cranberry molded salad ring. And we didn’t get to show you that but the recipe is included, we’ll be sure to send it to you. Here’s our Christmas tree rolls, I hope you can see this, aint that neat? Doesn’t that look just like a Christmas tree? With the red and green? I love it. The kids would love to do that, too. Next to it we have our casserole chicken wings. Don’t they look good enough to eat? They sure do. And down here, these are the au gratin french green beans. And next to it we have the fruited sweet potatoes. That smells so good, with that cinnamon flavor, delicious. And the center of attention, looks just like a Christmas wreath, this is our turkey and dressing ring. And you put the cranberry on top, you just slice it down , you know, the turkey there, you have the dressing, and the cranberry all at once. I hope that we’ve given you good ideas. I hope that this is a really special day. Hope all your friends are there. And I hope you’ll just take a moment to stop and remember what it is, and who it is, that we’re celebrating this wonderful birthday for. It’s Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. It’s what this celebrations all about. It’s not getting a special sweater, or a fancy diamond or whatever. The greatest gift of all, God gave to the world when he gave Jesus. And I hope that today, if your spending the day alone, I know you think well Arlene, you don’t understand because you’re, the people all around you and this, I do understand that. Because you can be in a room with a lot of people and still be lonely. The only one who will help you with your loneliness is a relationship with the Lord, Jesus Christ. And what a better time than right now at Christmas to invite him to come into your heart and to be the Lord of your life. You can have a very special day this holiday, even if you are alone, spending the day with the Lord. The Bible says that he’s a friend that sticks closer than your brother. So if that the kind of friend Jesus wants to be with you, then why not invite him to do so? Why not do it on this wonderful day? Come on family, come on friends, we’re inviting everyone to come around our table and this is what it’s all about, you know, just gathering our loved ones. Thank you so much, everyone, we appreciate all of them. And all the hard work. We hope you’re having a wonderful day. And we want to say a very big Merry Christmas to you and to your family. So be sure to join us the next time, because it just wouldn’t be the same without you here At Home. Merry Christmas everyone.
- Merry Christmas.
- Fresh produce provided by Jordan Banana, whole sellers of fresh fruit and vegetables in Dravosburg, Pennsylvania. Appliances provided by Dacor Distinctive Appliances, A reflection of your good taste. Groceries provided by Foodland, where the answer is always yes.
I always loved watching Arlene her and her husband Paul and the wonderful recipes she would show on her shows have a wonderful Heavenly Merry Christmas and Happy New year Arlene and Paul you are truly missed 🌹