Have you seen those commercials that say “Ahh, the power of cheese?” Well, I don’t want to be weird or anything, but cheese! It is powerful. Everyone loves it (please don’t tell me if you don’t love cheese, I would never recover from the shock) which means it is the perfect food to serve at get togethers, parties, funerals, weddings, baby showers, and late night television watching marathons.

Just in case I forgot to mention a time when serving cheese would be appropriate, a good rule of thumb is this: If people will be present, cheese should be on the menu. Hallelujah and amen.

My baby girl just had a birthday, so we celebrated by eating cake and ripping open presents. We also celebrated with a bit of this cheese spread. That’s the way birthdays are meant to be celebrated, after all.

There’s a picture of the birthday girl eating some snow. I figured it’d be okay to sneak a picture of her in as long as the picture included food. And, yes, I’m the type of mother that considers snow a good, healthy snack. Don’t judge.

Alright, back to the cheese. This cheese spread is simple, tasty, and perfect for your next get together. Feel free to play with the flavors of this and make it your own. I have a feeling that a bit of that powdered ranch dip mixed in would be quite tasty. You could also add a bit of finely diced jalapeno for a little kick. Or sprinkle in some cayenne if that’s more your speed. Play with it, have fun with it, but most of all, eat it. You won’t regret it.

Three Cheese Spread
Recipe adapted from Real Mom Kitchen

• 8 oz. block sharp cheddar cheese
• 8 oz. block pepper jack cheese
• 8 oz. cream cheese
• 2 tbsp. mayonnaise
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 tsp parsley
• 1 tsp. onion powder
• Dash of Tabasco
• Dash of Worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 cup milk (or more, depending on what consistency you want)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Grate the cheddar and pepper jack cheese. Add to a stand mixer or food processor and mix in the remaining ingredients. Continue mixing until everything is combined. Add more milk if you want a thinner consistency. Sprinkle with a bit of parsley if you want to be fancy and serve with crackers.

As much as I love to bake, I don’t generally make nine thousand different types of Christmas cookies. I’m actually pretty boring when it comes to Christmas cookies. I make my mama’s super delicious butter cookies, some peanut butter blossoms, and I always, always, always make buttons. Buttons really aren’t cookies though, and, actually, I don’t personally make them. I recruit my kids for that.

Buttons are the simplest treats you can make, they take minutes to prepare and bake, and then you just have to wait for the chocolate to harden up. My four year old and nine year old can do these completely by themselves.  Best of all, people just gobble these up!

All you need are round pretzels, also called pretzel rings, Hershey kisses, and m&m’s.

Line a baking sheet with parchment or wax paper and spread the pretzel rings out in a single layer. Plop a Hershey’s kiss in the center of each pretzel and bake at 200 degrees for about 5 minutes. The kisses hold their shape, so don’t wait for them to melt or you’ll burn your chocolate! Remove from the oven and smoosh an m&m right down on top of the Hershey’s kiss. Let them cool long enough for the Hershey’s kiss to harden back up and then go ahead and devour all of them.

Go make these. Your holiday just isn’t complete without them!

I’ll be back later in the week to share the recipe for those scrumptious little chocolate cookies covered in powdered sugar “snow” that you see in the above photo!

Updated to add: A lot of people have emailed me to say that they are having a difficult time finding the pretzel rings. I always buy the Kitchen Cooked brand, but even then I can only find them for a few weeks around Christmas. If you can’t find the rings, just buy the little square grid shaped pretzels (I think they are made by Snyder’s) and put the kiss right on top of the pretzel. They won’t look like buttons, but they are just as cute and yummy!

When I think of coffee cake, I think of a crumbly cake, preferably with a streusel topping, that you serve with coffee (much like this one).  I do not think of pastry dough and rolling pins, but this Raspberry Coffee Cake has shown me the light. The crust is so flaky and tender and the inside is just oozing with red raspberry preserves. It’s a raspberry lovers dream come true, but you could also make this with just about any other type of preserve you wanted. You could also use a seedless raspberry jam (which I usually buy, but my husband did the shopping this week) if you are scared of all the seeds.

The dough is a mixture of flour, butter, cream cheese, milk, a little salt, and some baking powder. It’s so simple! You just cut in the butter and cream cheese, pour in the milk and give it a quick mix, and then knead it just a tiny bit until you have this scraggly lump of dough.

Don’t be intimadated by this pastry dough! I had zero problems and the dough came out perfectly light and flaky! If the girl who relies on store bought pie crusts can master this dough, so can you.

Roll the dough out, transfer it to a baking sheet, and spread the middle third of the dough with preserves.

Slice the outer thirds of the dough diagonally, careful to leave a bit of space around the preserves, in about one to two inch thick strips.  Start on one side of the dough and flip one strip of dough over on top of the preserves.  Switch sides and just keep alternating back and forth until all the strips of dough are covering the preserves and you have a fancy braided looking coffee cake.

This bakes in just 12 to 15 minutes.

I forgot to line my pan with wax paper and my kids are really going to hate me for that when it comes time to wash the dishes. Oh well, I’ll just give them a big chunk of this as an apology.

Whip up some powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla and drizzle it over the top. You won’t regret it.

Mm! Perfect for breakfast, brunch, with coffee, or as a dessert. Heck, I might even eat this for dinner.

Raspberry Coffee Cake
Recipe from The Luna Cafe

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter (recipe says unsalted, but I used salted butter)
• 3 ounces cream cheese
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup raspberry preserves (or preserves of your choice)

Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt into a large bowl. Cut in the butter and cream cheese. Pour on the milk and stir just until combined. Turn out on a floured surface and knead lightly 4 or 5 times. Do not overwork the dough! Roll the dough out on wax paper into an 8 x 12 inch rectangle. Transfer dough to a lightly greased (or wax paper lined) baking sheet. Mark the dough with a knife lengthwise into thirds. Spread preserves down the center third of the dough. Make diagonal cuts every couple of  inches on the outer thirds of the dough. Do nut cut into the preserves. Fold strips over the preserves, first from one side, then from other until you have folded over all the strips of dough. Bake for 12 – 15 minutes, until dough is fully cooked and lightly browned on top.

Icing

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tbsp milk
• 1/4 tsp vanilla

Stir together and drizzle over the coffee cake.

(The recipe posted on Luna Cafe does show how to fold the dough over to make the braided shape if you need a visual!)

I think you all know what my favorite ingredient is, right? It’s butter, of course! It improves the taste of just about everything. Brownies? You need butter. Steak? Plop some butter on that bad boy. Bread? Spread the butter on there nice and thick! Butter is good, man.

These butter cookies are perfect. The recipe uses an entire pound of butter so the flavor just shines right through. They are like a little taste of my butter filled dreams.

This is my mama’s recipe and we all know that recipes from your mama are going to be good, right?

These mix up quick, chill in the fridge for a half hour and then are ready to be rolled and cut into whatever shapes you like. We went with Christmas shapes this time, but don’t consider these to be just Christmas cookies. My mama makes these for her co-workers’ birthdays and people just beg her for the recipe. They are darn good.

My kids really prefer a simple, understated look when it comes to decorating these cookies.

Really, though, you could use royal icing for these and make some pretty spectacular looking cookies if you know how to decorate. Me? I leave that to the kids. I just mix up some powdered sugar, milk, and a little food coloring and beg my kids to keep the icing on the cookies and not decorate the walls. Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don’t. And sometimes they bury the gingerbread man in sprinkles. The life of a cookie is rough.

Butter Cookies

• 1 pound butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 4 egg yolks
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp salt

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Cream together butter and sugar. Add egg yolks and vanilla and mix well. Beat in the flour and salt. Chill for 30 minutes in the refrigerator. Roll out dough between 1/4 and 1/2 inch and cut into shapes. Bake on ungreased cookie sheet for 10 minutes or until very lightly browned on the bottom. Keep a close eye on these, because they are not nearly as tasty when they get too brown.

This recipe was made using Challenge Butter, which Challenge Dairy sent to me to try out and write about. I loved the butter, it was creamy and sweet and perfectly delicious. Challenge Dairy asked that I write about their butter, but the opinions are my own and are not, nor will they ever be, for sale. Challenge Dairy is also holding a “Taste of the West” sweepstakes where you can enter to win a 7 day/6 night trip for 4 people to the Mountain Sky Guest Ranch. This trip is valued at $17,000. The only restriction is that if you win, you are required to take me. (I’m just joking about that last bit. Kind of.)

Well, it’s nearly that time of year. The time for us all to put on our fat pants and gorge ourselves on turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce (blech!) and, of course, pumpkin pie. I’m excited.

Things have been hectic around here, so I don’t have a new recipe for you today, but I thought I’d link to a few of the recipes that are going on my Thanksgiving menu and a few that should be on yours. Ready?

First up, you should definitely consider serving these Candied Roasted Nuts as a little snack for people to munch on while they wait for the turkey to roast. People like nuts. It’s a fact.

If you’re looking for a good dip, you can’t go wrong with this Hot Corn Dip. Even people who don’t like onions (my husband!) eat this one. It’s good stuff. I’ll be making this and I tell you what, people better just stay away from it. It’s mine. All mine.

If you’re feeling adventurous and have a bit of time, these Potato Croquettes are a crowd pleaser and this recipe makes enough to feed an army.

Of course, you can’t have Thanksgiving without Deviled Eggs and my eggs come complete with bacon and cheddar cheese. Please make these. Do it for me.

If you’re tired of plain ol’ corn, give this Corn with Bacon and Cheddar a try. You won’t be sorry.

However, if you like your corn a little more traditional, you’ll enjoy this Scalloped Corn. I’ll be making Scalloped Corn this year. It’s the right thing to do.

As for desserts, I’m not going to recommend one. I’m going to recommend ALL of them. There’s raspberry pie, blackberry pie bars, strawberry gallettes, thick and fudgy brownies, cookies of all sorts, and a whole lot more.

Now go get out those fat pants and have a Happy Thanksgiving!