Arlene Makes Wonderful Christmas Gifts from the Kitchen! 🎁

Hello and so I’m so glad to see you today. I’m glad you could be with us for this third program of getting ready for our Christmas holidays. We’ve done all kinds of cookies, things that you want to share with your family, maybe with a neighbor next door. Things that you could put into the freezer large enough quantities you could put some in the freezer and have them even in Easter time if you wanted to. But really, today what we’re going to be doing is some more gifts that you could give and some ideas for you. Linda Wilson is so creative. She did this little gift bag for me, and what it is, is you buy a little lunch bag, really it’s all it is. And she’s got a heart — I’m sorry, not a heart. It’s a tree, right? Tree shape on the front of it. And then she put some green tissue paper. Just kind of — let me see if you can see that on the camera. See how we did that? She has taped it to the inside and made a nice little gift bag. You could put this — this has a wax coating so would not grease through if you put something greasy like a cookie, they had a lot of butter in it, or a piece of fudge. But you could put that together like that. And do a little doily over the top, maybe punch a hole through it and pull little ribbon through. It’s a wonderful little gift bag. You know these are a little expensive when you go to the store to get them. Here she did a little house for At Home. And here she put the plastic wrap so you can see through it. So you could see whatever the treat would be. Another gift bag idea, we have a red one, we have a green one, then of course there are a lot of these on the market that already have your holiday decoration on the outside that you would not have to do anything with. They’re foil pans. They’re in all brightly colored. The outside is brightly colored, you can bake your goodie right in that and just give the whole thing to the person that you want to give the gift to. There are containers like this that are very, very inexpensive, and they seal tight. When you’re doing cookies, you’re — the biggest enemy with cookies, besides your husband that eats them all before you get to put them out for your friends or your kids is the air that dries them out. This has a good seal. The way you can tell the container has a good seal is when you close it, you hear it snap, when it snaps and it’s concave here, you know that the air is — no more air is going to get in there. And if you use them year after year, watch it, because if they get cracked, the air will get in there and that snap will not be there. But these are very inexpensive and this is a nice way to give someone a gift. You know what I found over the years that have gone and spent money that I really didn’t have for gifts that people really didn’t want, just because I felt an obligation to them to give them something for Christmas. A couple of years ago, I started noticing that when I baked that extra banana bread or made that extra pan of fudge and gave that as a gift, they raved about it and I did something that I enjoyed doing like making it and they did something that they enjoyed, they received it. So today we’re going to do some gift ideas. And I want you to stay close by because we’re going to get started in just a minute. We’ll be right back.

Here’s today’s At Home holiday hint. A variety of herbal teas a jar of honey, a dainty mug filled with Christmas cookies all assembled in a wicker basket makes a great gift for a friendly neighbor. If you’ve got a helpful hint that you’d like to share, we want to hear from you. Send your hint to At Home hints CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania 15148 -1499. One of the goodies that we’re baking today is a pie. Now I never think of a pie Christmas time but it’s something that a lot of people do. I have friends that make cherry pies. Anyway, we have a regular pie crust prepared here, fluted around the edges, just a plain pie crust. You can buy them already frozen if you want to. This is just one of those refrigerated ones that I’ve lined my pie shell with, and it’s called a Toll House pie. Now if you’re like Toll House cookies or your kids do, this is a bend on that. It’s a little twist to it, I think you’re going to enjoy it. Okay, stick with me. You bake this in a 325 degree oven. So you preheat that first. Now we’re going to take our two eggs, put them in our mixing bowl. And we’re going to beat them until they’re foamy. So you want to give them a real good chance to get going there. All right. The foaminess, you beat them that way because that helps to make a custardiness kind of effect with the pie. Now to that, then we’re going to add our flour, which is just a half a cup of flour. Okay. I’m going to stop this until we do this, half a cup of flour. This is a half cup of white sugar, half a cup of brown sugar. Okay, we’re going to let that blend real well there. Okay. Get my little spatula here so we can be sure to scrape it down. Anytime you use a mixer, you got to be sure you scrape it down, because you want all of those ingredients to get very well blended. This is kind of a gooey, beginning for this pie, but there we go. Okay, when that’s mix very well then you’re going to start to pour. This is some melted butter that is melted and then cooled to room temperature. Okay. Now we mix that together. Think we’re just about there. Okay, not hard to mix all of that together, doesn’t take too long. Again, you don’t want to over beat it, but you want to do it until everything in that pan is very well blended. Scrape that batter off those beaters too. All right. Now what we’re going to add to this is, make sure it’s scraped on the bottom, we’re going to add some walnuts and some chocolate chips. Okay. We’re going to mix this really, really well. We’re going to pour it into this pie shell that has not been baked. You don’t want to bake it first. You just want to make sure that this is very well blended. You wouldn’t want to use the beater to mix in the chocolate chips and the walnuts because it would break them apart. You want those to stay firm like they are in a cookie. Okay? So we scrape it all out real good. Put all those chocolate chips and walnuts in there. Again, this is going to be sweet, but this is Christmas. And this is a time of the year that you kind of do things that you normally wouldn’t. We certainly wouldn’t have these kinds of goodies all year long. Smooth out the top and put this in the oven. This bakes for one hour. Okay? We’re going to go ahead and put that in our 325 degree oven and it’s going to bake for one hour. Now, when you serve that, you serve that small little sliver, not a big piece of pie like you normally would, just a sliver. And you will either to top it with cool whip or whip topping of some kind or a scoop of ice cream. That’s something special. That could be a nice dessert for your Christmas dinner for something different. Okay, next we want to show you, this is a very traditional thing. At our house, it would not be Christmas unless we had Banana Nut Bread. And it’s so easy to make if you are sitting there saying oh, I don’t have time to tackle all of these. Don’t be intimidated by doing all of them. Just choose one. When you send for the gift packet, look through there and think boy, I think my family would enjoy this more. And if that’s the one then pick that recipe and just make one this year. I tell you this one is so simple. This would probably be the one that I would think I would make first. Okay, we got some sugar. This time we have Crisco instead of butter or margarine. We’re going to cream this very well together. This is only a half a cup of shortening and a cup of sugar and you want to cream it very, very well. Make sure you get that Crisco and add sugar incorporated together. Okay, get my recipe here. Now we’re going to add two eggs. Okay. Add the two eggs. Now, what you need for this is three to four very ripe bananas. Now when I say very ripe, I’m not talking about some that are all yellow and are still firm. I’m not talking about — I’m talking about almost like, you’re going to say, do I make a banana bread or do I throw these out? Which you shouldn’t throw them out, throw them in the freezer. If you put them in the freezer, totally don’t touch them don’t take the skins off, just put them in the freezer, they will freeze up firm. And when it comes time to use them, you thaw them out under warm water, take the skins off, and what you’ll have is the actual pulp of the banana and you can use it in your Banana Nut Bread. So you just take your bananas, and you mash them with a fork. You say how you mash them. You take the banana, the whole banana, put it on a flat dish, mash them with a fork until they’re very soft. And you need three to four. Remember the banana flavor, if you have a green taste to a banana, because it’s not right, that’s what your banana breads going to taste like. It has to be overripe. And you know what, sometimes you get those on sale because you’ll, if you’ll look around and you’re in the produce section, like at the food land, you go over and say, any overripe bananas? They’ll sometimes mark them down, and they’ll be less than the 30 or 49 cents a pound for your other bananas, or go on over to Jordan’s and ask them about bananas. They know all about bananas. Anyway, we got our bananas in there now. Now we have soda, salt, add that to our two cups of flour. Blend it together a little bit, just add it all at once. And I’m going to add my walnuts at that same time, because remember, I told you, do your walnuts in the flour because if you don’t, the nuts will all settle at the bottom of your loaf of bread. So if you cover them over with the flour first, then they stay up in the batter wherever you end up putting them, Okay. Now I don’t like to use the beater when I put the walnuts in because it kind of breaks them down. This point depends if I don’t put the walnuts in, I would use the mixer. If I put the walnuts in, then I kind of just stir it around. And what this, this much will make one large loaf of banana bread, kind of a pan this size. Or you can make two smaller loaves, which is kind of nice if you entertain a lot. Sometimes you get a loaf of bread out and you cut it up and then it dries out. You don’t like that. So if you make smaller loaves, they would probably get eaten quicker. And they won’t, they won’t be as much to dry out or to waste. We certainly don’t want to waste them and they’re nice to give as a gift too. We talked about gift giving at the beginning, maybe we could take a shot of the banana breads that we have on display here. When I have done this could be a suggestion for a gift, in this large, you see the large banana bread here in the back. That’s a false craft dish that you could give as part of your gift. You bake your bread, and then you wrap it when it’s cold, you wrap it and then you put it back in the dish and you give that as a gift, give the dish and all there’s something they can enjoy right now. And then they’ll enjoy the dish when they’re making their banana bread. Be nice to include the recipe with that too. Then the two in the front that I’ve done in foil pans. That’s a nice way to give a gift also to maybe that mailman or the paperboy or somebody who has been real nice to you. Maybe a person who, at the checkout, she’s just done some really nice things for you. Those are some nice gifts to give a time like that. Okay, now we’re ready to put this in our dish, sorry, in our baking dish and just make sure that you spread it evenly. You know, people get upset. Say, ah, the top of my banana bread splits all the time. Well it’s supposed to. It’s characteristic of a banana bread, or nut bread. They usually do split on the top. Because this banana bread you bake for a very long time at a very low temperature. In fact, this banana bread bakes at 275 degrees for one and three quarter hours or even as long as two hours I’ve had them, depending on how many bananas is in that. You know banana makes the dough heavier. And it only the temperature being a 275, you can see that it would take a lot for a heavy dough to cook. Now what I always do is and what that does that gets all the air bubbles out. Do you ever have a piece of bread, you take a bite and there’s a big bubble in it. So you shake it like that? Bake that, I’m not going to do it in the oven because I’ve got my other things in the oven. But you bake that at about 275 to 300 for one and three quarter hours. Trust me you will have the most moist banana bread you’ve ever eaten. Now the thing when you wrap these and freeze them, do not remove the wrapper when you’re throwing them because you’ll dry it out. Leave that moisture in there and we’ll go back in the bread. It will make it very good. Okay, we’re going to move over here. This is something we’ve done for the first time it’s called truffles. And it’s an unusual candy that’s nice to give as a gift Let me just show you what the truffles look like. I’m going to bring this over, call the guys here to maybe get this picture. These are truffles. I honestly don’t know the origin of it, but these are wonderful little candies that you don’t have to cook, but I kept this tin from a couple of years ago. Keep it nice and clean and, and no rust in it. And you put these little — tack these little papers. and it looks like a professional box of candy. And you can roll them in pecans, I’ve rolled some of these and pecans, some are in walnuts. And then of course, some are in coconut. But there are all kinds of things that you can do with this kind of a recipe. And I think you’ll enjoy giving that. I would enjoy receiving that from someone as a gift. Well, this is called Easy Truffles. And believe me, they are very easy. I’ve melted in the microwave. In this bowl, a 12 ounce package. I use the milk chocolate bits instead of the semi-sweet seemed like we use a semi sweet for everything. So I wanted to do something a little different. Okay, now to this we’re going to add one eight ounce package of cream cheese. Okay, that is very soft, you have to have this very soft. In fact, the softer the better. Okay. And I’m going to use my, let get my mixer over here. See if I can get my — because I have to use something. It’s important to blend it well. If you don’t, you’ll have lumps in the truffles. What could be worse than lumps in the truffles. We don’t want that. So we’re going to do it with a mixer to be sure that we don’t have that problem. And we’ll blend it very well. The chocolate will get very smooth with that cream cheese. This is the basis for the whole truffle. I think truffles really began in England. I’m not really sure, but I think they started there. Seemed like someone told me about that one time. Make sure that there’s no little lumps in this cream cheese. You want to beat it very, very, very well. Okay. Dale, how much time do we have here? Okay. Now to this, we’re going to add, scrape off some of that, because we want to use all that chocolate there. To this we’re going to add powdered sugar. There. Several cups of powdered sugar, and a little bit of vanilla. You say if it’s chocolate, why do you use vanilla? You know, I’m not sure I understand that either, but they called for it. I think it just enhances the flavor and going to do this on a low speed until starts to really come together. But I think that vanilla does tend to enhance the flavor of whatever you add it to. And I think that’s the reason why they always tell you add some vanilla to it. And then a vanilla is a good basis for flavor, I guess support the chocolate. I don’t know. Maybe somebody could write and tell me if they knew. Would be the interesting to know that. So we’re making the — this is the inside part or the actually the truffle and of course the powdered sugar is flying everywhere, which I’m not surprised. Okay. We should have made this one in the big mixer, but it will be all right, just persevere. Okay, if you have a little portable mixer at home, that’s okay. Don’t worry about it. You can make them with a little portable mixer. This is a portable mixer. Just takes a little longer, that’s all. Maybe this is something that kids could get involved in too. Know they would love them. Now what do you do with this then you have to, once this is totally incorporated, you have to refrigerate your dough for about an hour. Now if you do it longer than an hour, really you have to bring it out and try it. Because what happens, what happens is you can’t handle it because the — it will stick to your hands. So that little bit of chill to bring the dough just right is what you need to do. And what I do is take a melon baller or take a little round just like that. You roll it in your hand. Now this is not — it’s going to be stiffer than this. I’m doing this for time sake. You roll it around in your hand. Then you roll in your pecans or your walnuts or your coconut and really that’s all there is to a truffle. Is that the easiest thing in the world? And these you should keep in the refrigerator. It’s important to keep because they have the cream cheese in them, but this is not quite ready. You need to refrigerate the dough and for time sake, I just want to show you the easiest way to make a truffle that you’ve ever seen. All right, that will make about, makes about four or five dozen truffles. And it’s a nice way to give a little gift box to someone who really means something special to you. Now the last one that we’re going to be doing today, Linda Wilson found this recipe. She’s says Arlene, this is the easiest fudge that I have ever seen in my life. And I said, well, how easy? She said, would you believe in two minutes it’s done? I said, you know, that’s hard to believe, because I know that fudge it has its own temperament. And if you don’t have it just right, forget it. Into this, we’ve put how much? One and a half packages of chocolate chips, which would be 12 and six, makes 18 ounces. So she said all you do is one minute. Okay. One minute we start. Now what do you have, what else goes in this? This is called Rocky Road Fudge. And what makes it rocky road is the fact that you put the tiny little miniature marshmallows in there. Okay. Let me read the recipe for you. It’s one cup of sweetened condensed milk, your 18 ounces of chocolate chips, one cup of sweetened condensed milk, one teaspoon of vanilla, a dash of salt. And one, I’m sorry, two cups of miniature marshmallows. And if you want to add walnuts, you can add as many or as few as you’d like. Okay, so we’re at one minute, we have 18 seconds to go here. We’re just going to see if what she said was right, because this is, this is a pretty high power microwave and you might have to adjust the time if your microwave is a lower power, but when it gets kind of melted, that’s the time to bring it out. Let’s see two, one. Here we go. There’s one minute. Okay. Now what do we do now? We pour the sweetened condensed milk, the whole, the whole one. Okay? Here’s a whole one. Okay. Okay, we’re going to stir it up real good. Okay, we put it back in Linda? We put it back in to the microwave, for one minute. Or until what?

Everything is melted.

Till everything’s melted. Now that could be where you’re going to have to adjust your time, because maybe it won’t melt down as quick. Okay? Is that enough that I stirred it? Okay. We’re going to put this back in for one more minute. Okay. What did we do without microwaves? It took a long time to do things that that we’re doing now and in shorter time, because microwave cooking is so much easier. Now, when we talked about all the recipes that we were making available to you, we’ve made it into a packet. If you’ve not seen the last couple of programs, you say, oh, I missed all the cookies. What numbers do I write for? The whole month of December you write for packet number 130. It’s a little different. We’re going to be telling you in just a few minutes, the different procedure this time and ordering these recipes, because we’ve included all of them for you, instead of just getting one week’s worth of recipes. We’ve included all of them in a booklet just for you. And we’ve hope we can make it a little easier than normal instead of having to write every week. So we can get the recipes to you quicker, you can get your baking done quicker and your gift giving. Okay, we’ve got nine seconds. Now what am I going to do? After that’s done and it’s nice and smooth, then we’re going to add the vanilla, the salt, and the walnuts. Let’s see if it’s ready. Okay. Is it supposed to look like this, Linda? Okay, we’re going to start with an amazing — okay, and this looks like it’s getting nice and smooth. Okay, we’ll make sure we get all of the sweetened condensed milk in there blended. Okay, now we’re going to add the marshmallows. The vanilla, add the vanilla. A little bit of salt, just a dash of salt, and the marshmallows. Okay, let’s add a few pecans too, why not? A little handful. Now we’ve got to mix this up. And you want to put it into a buttered dish, a buttered either square pan or the glass dish like we have. And this, boy, does this smell good. Losing my marshmallows every here and there. Boy does it’s smell good and what can be easier than this. This looks so simple. Now does this have to be refrigerated Linda?

Yes. Till it’s firm.

You should keep it in the refrigerator, put it in a refrigerator as soon as you make it and leave it there until it’s firm. Now let’s just pour it into the dish. See what we got here. Linda, I can’t believe this is one of the easiest recipes I’ve ever seen for fudge. Now we’re always looking and trying and striving to find good and easy recipes for our viewers and every once in a while we hit on something we say wow. That’s really good. I think we got a winner here. I can tell you just by the feel on my, on my hand with this spoon, it’s setting up already. So it will set up. I’ve had a lot of this stuff that doesn’t set up so good. And listen, I want to tell you now about these recipes. So stay tuned. We’ll be right back to wrap up the show in just a minute.

To receive your special Christmas recipe packet number 130 containing all of this month’s holiday recipes, please listen very carefully. Just send a self-addressed business sized double stamped envelope. Yes, two stamps on that envelope please with $1 or more to recipe packet 130 At Home, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania 15148-1499 You will only need to write once this month to receive all of our Christmas recipes from At Home. And please have a very blessed holiday.

Don’t forget now that is to send your recipe request in a large envelope that’s marked two recipe packet 130 at home CTV, Wall, PA 15148-1499. In this envelope, you include another envelope that has two stamps, and has your name, your address, your town, your state, and your zip, and $1 or 2 to help us with the printing cost of our packets. Remember all the recipes and everything that we have made put together in the last three weeks and what’s to come next week will be included in this packet. You only have to send one time this month to get them. We tried to make a little bit easier for you so that you wouldn’t have to keep writing so often. And when you get the packet, you’ve got all the recipes. You don’t have to keep writing week after week. Well as you can see, there’s lots on this table. Here’s our wonderful truffles that we made today. A really nice gift idea to anybody that you feel would enjoy something like that. We’ve made the easiest rocky road fudge you’d ever want to try right here. Here’s our beautiful banana breads. Here’s our Toll House pie with a little dollop of whipped cream. And that’s about all there is, but be sure to join us next time because it’s Christmas dinner. We’ll see you then wouldn’t be the same without you.

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