Christmas Gifts From the Kitchen: Homemade Hot Cocoa, Dipped Pretzels, and More!

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• Well, hello. Thank you very much. Wow. Geez. I don’t know why you’re all clapping, I guess it’s because we’re doing gifts today. You think that might have something to do with it? Welcome to At Home. It’s always a pleasure to have you with us. We’re so glad you could be here because today that’s just what we’re doing. Gifts from the kitchen. And you know, really some of it is baked things, some of it is just assembling but these are quick and easy gifts. Have you ever been in the position where you’re saying, oh my goodness, somebody’s coming and they’re walking up and they’ve got something for you and you have nothing for them. Well, what I’ve deciphered from a lot of people is they’ve been in that position and that’s not a nice position to be in. You’d like to give things, right? I’d rather give than someone give something to me. So what we’re going to give you today are ideas of things that you can make, assemble in your home and have them in a closet somewhere, have them in a big basket on the front hall and when someone comes up, the mailman or a friend drops in for a cup of tea, there’s just a little gift that you can give them. Just here’s something for you, here’s something for you. And that’s what we’re going to be doing today. First of all, I want to show you our Christmas tree. The beautiful decorations on our set are from Crafters Showcase here in the Pittsburgh area. Some great girls came, Shelly and Alice came and we just wanted, this is the nicest tree. This is truly an At Home tree. I mean, I feel like it should be part of our set permanently because it just says everything that we’re all about. You can see ornaments, they’re handmade, homemade, not the glitzy stuff. Nothing wrong with that but this is what we’re comfortable with because it is At Home. And I just want to thank them personally for what they’ve done to make our set look beautiful for the holidays. Next week, we’ll be doing our Christmas dinner. It’s gonna be a buffet. And so we thought we would just glitz up the set for these couple of programs because the time is really getting close. I hope you have your shopping done. I hope you have all the things done that you’ve wanted to do. And if you don’t have it painted by now, don’t worry about it. It’ll be there after the holidays. Paint and carpet and all that after the holidays. If you don’t it done now you’re not going to get it done I’m sure. But I also want to say that while we’re talking about gifts, that some of our sponsors, you know, Jordan Produce Company, Jordan Banana Company, they always have all kinds of fruit baskets. Those are gift ideas. They have vegetable baskets. They have food baskets. They have gift certificates. Foodland who supplies all the groceries that we use. They have wonderful gift certificates and any amount that you choose to spend, they’re willing to do a gift certificate for you. So please just keep those things in mind when you are ready to make out your list and the last minute ideas for your shopping list, go for it. All right, we’ll be right back. I’m telling you there’s gonna be people all over this kitchen today. Kick back, get your paper and pencil ready because it’s gifts from the kitchen here At Home. We’ll be right back. The staff and crew have 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 holiday sponsors. Thank you. I told you there’s gonna be a lot of surprises in the kitchen today. And my husband Paul is here with me and we do a lot of things together in the kitchen. He helps mostly dishes, right?
• Dishes and I like to eat.
• Of course we all. Oh, well that’s obvious. He’s melting chocolate because one of the first things that we’re going to be doing today is chocolate dipped pretzel rods. Now, ladies, get the guys to do the chocolate in the microwave while you’re assembling things. It makes the load lighter and easier. What you need to do is get these little pretzel rods. You can see there’s a lot of different brand names but I like the smaller ones. Now, sometimes you get the big, long rods and they don’t package and they end up breaking. You don’t want that to happen. So look for the bags of these. There’s some that are called “Penny Pretzels”. There’s a whole lot of different kinds but this is what you’re looking for. Have your piece of wax paper ready and what we’re using for chocolate, you can get these at the cake decorating or the candy supply place and these are dots. You can get them in the dark chocolate or milk chocolate or the white chocolate. And they’re about 2.50 a pound, something like that. You would not, I mean, you would do about two or three bags of these if you used a whole pound so you don’t need a lot. But what I like about these is these end up being a real nice. You can package them. You buy the little bags at the cake decorating place, put five or six of them and put a little bow on them. Just tuck it in with a present. Tape it on top of a box. There it’s just a lot of ideas that you can do with each. You can lie in a box and just it with a whole bunch of pretzel rods that have been dipped in chocolate. This is real good. We’ll come back to Paul as soon as he gets that melted. The next thing I’m going to make, is called amaretto cocoa mix. Now this is a flavored cocoa mix. You take one box. This is the big box. This is the 25.6 ounce box of non-fat dry milk. That’s what we have in this bowl. This makes 19 cups. Put it in a bag, tie it with a bow, put it in a Christmas mug. You have a gift. Now we’re going to add to that two jars. And this is a coffee mate. It’s amaretto flavor non-dairy creamer. Okay. Two jars. There’s one. All right, here’s the second one. This is going to flavor your cocoa mix. All right. Then we’re going to add this size, which is an 11 ounce non-dairy creamer. Just pour it all in there. I like things that you can put together quickly. I hate to be laboring, laboring, laboring over things. This is good old, I think Dale knows what this is, right Dale? Nestle Quick. Yeah. Did you eat this when you were a kid? My brothers used to fight over this. And all you do is you take this 16 ounce, one pound, dump it in there. You say my goodness, what are you going to do? You just pray that it doesn’t rain or sprinkle a sprinkling system in your house it goes off because you could be a there could be a lot of cocoa at your house. And then you add four cups of this is sifted powdered sugar. All right. Now you can see why it’s 19 cups. Now you don’t have to make this much but I feel like if you’re going to do it, go ahead and do it, right? Make it all at one time. All right. With that, you just start to mix. Mix it together. Use a slotted spoon so that it all mixes together very well. And these little packages that we’ve gotten, you can see these little sleeves here, after you have this thoroughly mixed and I mean you should not see any white, you should not see any cream, you shouldn’t see any brown. It should be thoroughly mixed together. You need a great big bowl to do this. And after it is done, then you’re going to take a funnel like this, put it in your bag and then just begin to fill it up. And I would fill it up about to there so that you can crimp the top, put a bow on it and you’ve got to make 19 cups. Do you realize how much you can make with this? If you want to keep it for yourself, store it back in the jars that you’ve taken it out of and put it on your kitchen you know, you’ve got some nice big jars and like I said, this does make a lot. Why not soak off the labels and put a bow on the top? You’ve got it. All right. So this is called amaretto cocoa mix. This stuff is good. What you also want to include is a little slip of paper that tells the people how to use it. Three heaping tablespoons to a cup of hot boiling water. Tell you. This stuff is good. All right. That’s our amaretto. Okay, honey, are we back with this? Let’s get rid of that. All right. So now we’ve melted. So you can see this, we’ve melted the chocolate and all we’re going to do here and you have to watch this so it doesn’t burn. Please be careful. It has to be this consistency and all you do is take your pretzel and run it to the side of your container and just roll it around, just like that. Okay. And you let the excess drop-off and you lay it on wax paper. After you’ve done. Let me see us do a couple more. You really should scrape the side. Now you can cover up as much as you want, or as little as you want. Okay. Let’s scrape the side an lay it. Then you take your non perils. You can do the little chocolate Jimmies and just tap them on the top. Look how nice. That look festive? Looks great. How much easier can it be? This is what you pay big bucks for. This is just chocolate dipped pretzels. That’s all it is. And there’s something about everybody talks about pretzels and chocolate. Say that there’s something about the salt and the chocolate together that makes it tastes good. That’s it. That’s as simple as it can be. Okay. Let’s move on. Now we’re going to show you a lot of different kinds of mustards to make. How about Kathy? Could you come in and kind of work on this for us? I’m going to have elves all over the kitchen today cause we’re showing you a lot of different things. This one you’re going to need, this is a hot tarragon mustard. And what I would suggest is that you accumulate throughout the year a whole lot of different kinds and sizes of jars. Any size you can find. Anything that has a good clean lid to it. Canning jars are wonderful. Jelly jars are great. These kinds of jars that have a good seal to the top of them like that. That’s the kind of a jar that you want to make these dipping mustards and some of the other things we’ll be preparing. All right. This one for the hot tarragon mustard, we’re going to take some tarragon leaves. I believe this is one and a half teaspoons and a fourth of a teaspoon of crushed red pepper. Now we’re going to put that in the blender and we just we need to pulverize that. That loud? Look at that. And you can hear the red peppers crushing up in there. When you don’t hear a crackle anymore you know you’ve got it pulverized. All right. To that we’re going to add, we’re going to add two jars of Dijon mustard. Now let me see here. Two jars. Whoops. That’s not going to work. Okay and just pour it in there. Well, these spoons are all too big. It happens, doesn’t it? Okay. And we’re just going to pour. Now Dijon, this Dijon, you know, has such a distinctive flavor. And this is great for dipping pretzels and crackers. All of this stuff is just incredibly good. Thanks Lynn. All right. And one more jar. We need the trash man here today. We’ve got jars and bottles and everything here, everybody working. That’s what Christmas is about though. It’s a season when everybody’s getting involved. And once we do this, we’re going to add a little bit of honey to this, just to sweeten it because the peppers in there is going to give it a bite, tarragon is going to give it a bite and what we’re going to show you at the end of the program is how you can make these and assemble them in gift baskets which anybody and everybody would love to have. Not just the postman or, I mean, family members would enjoy this. Then we’re going to put our honey. Whoops, sorry. We’re putting vinegar in this one. Not the honey. That’s the other one I’m going to show you. I’ll tell you it’s, there we go. Incredible to try to remember to keep these all straight. All right. What we’re going to do then is pour those into some jars. And I said, we have these little jars here and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. All right, Sandy, could you come and pour some of those for me? And I’m going to go onto the next one, which is makes, this one makes about six cups. This makes a lot so you want to have your jars ready. Don’t be thinking well I have a lot of time. You know, I can get the jars later. When you’re making this, you need to put in jars immediately. This is a 32 ounce just prepared mustard. That’s all this is. Prepared mustard. Now, if you have a great big food processor, put this in there and whirl it around. It works very, very well. You okay with that, Sam?
• Yep.
• Okay. And clean that out really good. I can’t take the time to do that today. You know how I am about that. I like to clean it up. All right, then we’re going to add two 12 ounce orange marmalade. Now we’re talking, You’re like, oh, I love the flavor of orange marmalade. And it’s just two jars of that. Now, if you would do this in the food processor, it would pulverize the marmalade and that is what you’re looking for. But I’ll tell you what I kind of like. When I’m dipping pretzels, if I use this to dip pretzels, I like that little bit of marmalade, that flavor that’s on there. I like to taste that. So you get two jars of that. Okay. And it’s one. Just go ahead and clean out the other. This makes a lot. So this is, you know, if you gave each person a little jar full with a cup in and you have six little gifts. Get some nice crackers, some nice hard sourdough pretzels, put it in a little basket, put a bow on it, you’ve got a gift. And what did it take? Just a little bit of time and it’s not one buy somebody a pair of gloves, spend money that you don’t have to buy gifts for people that they don’t need and then you end up the next two months paying for all those gifts. I think that we need to be more careful of that. All right, we’re going to mix this all up and we’re going to put it in our jars. And this is called honey orange mustard. And this is a dipping mustard for pretzels, for you can use it on crackers, you can use it on meats, you can use it whatever. This is it. All right. Hot honey orange mustard. All right, we’ll be right back in just a minute for a whole lot more gift ideas. Stay with us on At Home. Well, as you can see the place is just a hub of activity today because we’re making gifts from the kitchen and what we’re doing here is I’ve taken a third of a cup of water and two thirds of a cup of sugar and I’ve put it in my pan. I’ve taken four cups of walnuts and what you do with the walnuts, you have to boil them in boiling water for eight minutes. You bring them out and you put them on paper towels just like this to dry them out. These are walnuts that have been boiled. You’d say, well, why do you do that, Arlene? Well, I think you do that because it takes that real there’s like a flavor to it that’s very obvious. It takes the oil out of it. And it’s amazing these are candied walnuts. This is what you’re going to have when you’re done. So after this comes to a boil and you stir just a bit so that it dissolves and this has to boil for one minute, then we’re going to put our walnuts into this pan and we’re going to let them cook for about three minutes. I want to do this before I start on the next gift because this has to get dissolved real well. Okay. We’re going to do that. Then we cook these for about three minutes in the pan then we take them out of there and put them on a buttered cookie sheet, bake them for 25 minutes at 325 degrees. And I’ll tell you what. You talk about candied walnuts tasting good. This is so nice to put a little jar, put in a big apothecary jar. Perfect. I mean just a delicious idea and something so tasty that you can put them on top of ice cream. You can put them on top. You can put them in cookies. You can just eat them by the handfuls because they taste really, really good. Okay. That’s boiling. When that gets going there, we’re almost there. You want to use a slotted spoon when you take the, lemme start to add these now. Okay. You know, when you get the booklet with all the Christmas ideas in it, you’re going to find other recipes that we have just not had time to show you and that’s okay because they’re simple and you can figure out how to do them. We’ll show you the finished products at the end of the program but time did not permit us to make all the things we wanted to today. But there is so many ideas and I just thought, well, boy, if I just give them a whole lot of ideas, they can make up their own baskets and make up their own gifts. And I wanted to do this program specifically so that you could come up with gifts from the kitchen rather than spending a lot of money for the other gifts. Okay. These are, you can tell this is very dry. It doesn’t have the shine to it ’cause I’ve boiled them for eight minutes and drain them and then you wrap them in paper towels to get all the moisture off. You have to do that. That’s really important. And we’re just going to let them try to get them in a single layer as much as you can and be sure that you have your baking sheet buttered because they’re going to go on there and they’re going to bake for, like I said, 25 minutes. All right. The other one we’re going to make for you is called brownie nut bread. And all it is is a package of fudge brownie mix, this little envelope kind and a buttermilk biscuit mix. I have that here. We’re going to have two thirds cup of water, two eggs, fourth of a cup of vegetable oil, teaspoon of vanilla. Get the vanilla here. Just a teaspoon. And let’s see, I think that’s it. And we’re going to just mix this up. You could probably do this with your, you know, the spoon. You don’t even have to use a mixer if you didn’t want to. I think it makes a smoother batter but if you don’t have a mixer don’t worry about it. This also has a wonderful creamy cinnamon spread that you package with your loaf of the brownie nut bread and it’s just the ingredients in that are so simple. It’s just cream cheese and cinnamon and a little bit of sugar and you put it in a little jar, just like we have here and you package that with your loaf of bread. It comes out so nice. What a nice gift from the kitchen again and something that your friends are going to enjoy and hopefully you’re going to enjoy making it because you put a little bit of your heart into it. Okay. You’re going to mix this. Now I like to make, this makes two loaves if you use the little mini pans. I can’t tell you how important it is for you to have them well greased. It’s very, very important. Okay. We’re going to let that go and scrape down the sides. Now we’re going to stir. We’re not done with this batter yet because we’re going to stir some chocolate chips. We have a couple of, let’s see, six ounce. This is about a cup of chocolate chips. All right. And a half a cup of chopped pecans. This was like a big half cup. Okay. So we’re not going to put all those in. And we also have a half a cup of raisins. Unusual, huh? But boy is that ever good. Just tastes so good. And you’re going to put those into the pans. Mix it just, you don’t want to use the beaters when you’re stirring in these raisins and chocolate chips and the walnuts. You don’t want to use that but you divide it among the two and this bakes for 45 to 50 minutes. I tried. It was about 50 minutes was the best at 350 degrees. Well grease those pans. Okay. And then the recipe for the spread is also included. All right. I think these are just about there. What do you think, Paul?
• You know how I like nuts.
• Yeah, I know. You want to help me dear?
• I’ll help you.
• Okay. Will you just spoon these out, drip off all the stuff. You want to make sure all that excess stuff drips off because it just makes it grainy and spoon them in a single layer there. Okay.
• Mm-hmm.
• All right. Now let’s see. I want to make a plum sauce. This is a plum sauce that is so good because you can use this as a topping on your desserts or you can use it when you have a Chinese dinner. Let’s see. I think I’ll make it right over here for you. I’ll tell you. We have stuff everywhere today because we’re just having a good time making all kinds of gifts from the kitchen and like I said, there’ll be a lot more in the recipe folder in the booklet that you’re going to be sending for. This is a can of whole purple plums that you can buy at the store. We’ve taken the pits out, drained them well and chopped up the plums. That’s there. Then again, another jar of orange marmalade. This is really good. You can do the food processor, the blender, the mixer, whatever. Then we want red plum jam or damson preserves. And we’re just going to mix this. This is so good. So tasty. Honey you can turn the fire off on that if you will please.
• Okay.
• And it’s just again, assembling, it’s really not cooking. It’s just assembling. All right. And then we add some ground cinnamon to this. Here’s our damson preserves. I like stuff that you can just put together that you don’t have to keep cooking and worrying about. And while I’m putting this together, we’re going to take a break and come back and show you a whole lot of the things that we made today. Some of the things that you didn’t even get to see us prepare. We have samples. Come right back, okay? 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 Cornerstone Television, Wall Pennsylvania 15148-1499. Send for your booklet today and begin your holiday menu planning. Happy holidays from at home.
• Well, I want you just to take a look at some of the baskets that we’ve assembled with all the things that we’ve prepared today, and some of the things you didn’t get to see us prepare. This is one huge big basket, and you can see we’ve just taken some of our, the logs that we’ve covered with chocolate and we added them to it. Jars of this, little jars of that. I mean, a little bit of everything. Basically, you take a jar like this if you want to put a little cover to it, cut a circle by as big as a saucer, take the ring off of it just like this, put your fabric over the top and just screw it back on and it makes a nice little skirt over your jar. It just dresses it up. Remember to put tags on it. If stuff needs to be refrigerated please tell them so it doesn’t spoil because you would really need to have that information or you wouldn’t know. Hard pretzels, we just tuck that in the basket with everything else. Here’s our candied walnuts. As you can see, there’s the brownie nut bread, a little bit of everything but it sparks some ideas in your mind. Start thinking about. I think you’re going to be surprised at what you come up with. Thanks for helping today, honey.
• Oh, I’m glad to.
• Good. And we’re glad that you were here too and we hope that you’ll be sure to join us the next time because it’s going to be Christmas dinner. We’ll see you then on At Home. Bye-bye now.
• [Narrator] Fresh produce provided by Jordan Banana. Wholesalers 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. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers who’s consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.