Christmas Trays, 2012 edition

For some reason, I opted for completely new and untried recipes for my give away Christmas goodies this year.  No haystacks, no decorated sugar cookies, no fudge.  Not even any O'Henry bars.  It was a grand adventure!

Christmas balls.  I really like these - it's a sort of sugar-cookie-ish dough (made with powdered sugar) with almond extract, and the frosting in the middle is also almond.  But I think when I make them next time I'll toss the whole Christmas balls thing and just do flat cookies frosted with the icing on top and sprinkled with the sugar.

White chocolate macaroons.  LOVE these.  They are now a go-to cookie year round, super easy and oh so delicious.  I skipped the part where you drizzle more white chocolate on top then sprinkle with red or green sugar.  They are on the sweet side as is.

Toffee bars.  These were OK, but I won't make again.  I have a different recipe for toffee bars that is a total pain in the rear.  (It involves stirring sweetened condensed milk constantly till it boils.  "Stir constantly" is sort of like "dry clean only" in my book!  Plus it's one of those multi-stage ones that you have to keep paying attention to.)  I figured this easier version was worth a try. 

It's not like it's inedible, but I decided to take the leftovers up to the janitors tomorrow if that tells you anything.  The pain in the rear recipe is to die for, so I guess it's worth the trouble over a pale substitute.

Nutter butter snowmen!  These weren't as bad as I thought to make, although I sort of chintzed on the decorating.  I had trouble finding the recommended candies, not to mention how expensive it was going to be to get everything they suggested.  But having done them once, I think they could easily just be decorated by piping on frosting.  They taste awesome - but did anyone really think a Nutter Butter covered in white chocolate wouldn't?

My army of snowmen, half still naked!  I don't work fast enough from dipping to decoration (I don't think it's possible, really, unless you had an assembly line), so had to resort to attaching the scarves (closer to bow ties, but it worked!) and hats with corn syrup.  That was the only point I wanted to quit - so darn sticky! - but they don't really look like snowmen without.  I was supposed to give them pretzel arms, too.  Oh, well.

The assembly phase.  I made too much, or bought too small of plates, or both.  It barely fit!  And I have almost a pan of toffee bars left, and at least a dozen of the macaroons.  I saved the leftover snowmen to take to my parents next week, but I'm not sure how well they will travel.

A closeup.  I had some of the white chocolate left, so I did some chocolate covered pretzel sticks.  I think they rounded the planned stuff out nicely.

Wrapped and ready to go!  Anyone want to place a bet on how many plates never get delivered?