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Christmas is only five days away, and the holidays are not complete without desserts. If you're looking for different recipes than the traditional chocolate chip cookies, we have what you need.
Here are seven unique holiday-themed dessert recipes to try this year:
White chocolate peppermint cookies
This take on white chocolate cookies is the perfect way to jazz up Santa's cookies. Filled with the deliciousness of white chocolate with a kick of peppermint, this will be your favorite cookie recipe this holiday season. This recipe is quick and easy, only taking 25 minutes to make. Add some hot chocolate in the mix and you have yourself a merry, sweet Christmas.
You can find the recipe for white chocolate peppermint cookies here.
Hot chocolate cookies
Is there anything better than hot chocolate on a cold December night? How about hot chocolate with hot chocolate cookies? Although it's a chocolate supreme treat, make your holiday a little sweater by trying these at home. This recipe makes regular chocolate chip cookies look boring, and is equally as easy to make. It will only take you 30 minutes to make these hot cocoa cookies and you will probably finish eating them quicker than that. Try making these oozy, mouth watering cookies this holiday season.
You can find the recipe for hot chocolate cookies here.
Pecan pie truffles
Pecan pie is a holiday favorite, so try making pecan truffles that will surely impress your guests. Filled with pecan pie flavors, these little truffles can be made for a Christmas dessert, a fun gift or midnight snacks while you're watching your favorite holiday movie. This recipe will take less than an hour to make, and you can freeze them for an anytime snack.
You can find the recipe for pecan pie truffles here.
No bake coconut snowballs
This recipe is perfect for coconut lovers and anyone low on time this holiday season. If you have five minutes to spare, try making these for a healthier Christmas treat. These coconut snowballs are filled with coconut and dipped in chocolate for a no bake version of cookies your whole family will love.
You can find the recipe for no bake coconut snowballs here.
Pumpkin cheesecake muffins
We aren't sure when muffins became breakfast food, but we are so glad they did. These pumpkin cheesecake muffins are sugary goodness for any pumpkin lover. With cream cheese filling and brown sugar crumb cake topping, it will be the most tempting breakfast for Christmas morning. The comforting feeling of eating pumpkin during the holiday season should be reason enough to make these. This recipe will take you 50 minutes.
You can find the recipe for pumpkin cheesecake muffins here.
Cinnamon roll sugar cookies
A perfect combination of two of your favorite treats, it doesn't get any better than this: cinnamon roll sugar cookies. This recipe will take you 50 minutes to make. And the best part is you can make them year round. Forget tradition, try making these cinnamon roll sugar cookies this year.
You can find the recipe for cinnamon roll sugar cookies here.
Baked apple cider donut holes
Apple cider and donut holes? Count me in! This sweet treat is exactly what you need Christmas morning. Filled with apple cider flavor and covered in cinnamon sugar or an apple cider glaze, this fall-inspired dish is a perfect snack. This recipe will take you 42 minutes to make, so round up your family and friends for a fun baking night. If you're a fan of apple cider and donuts, miss the opportunity to make these.
You can find the recipe for baked apple cider donut holes here.
This is part of a holiday series counting down to Christmas so make sure to visit Austonia tomorrow, as we reach four days until Christmas.
- Countdown to Christmas: Holiday light displays around Austin ... ›
- Countdown to Christmas: Dogs of Austin are ready for the holidays ... ›
- Countdown to Christmas: Christmas songs by Austin musicians ... ›
- Countdown to Christmas: DIY crafts for the whole family - austonia ›
- countdown-to-christmas - austonia ›
- Where to volunteer, donate this holiday season in texas - austonia ›
- Santa poses with newborn babies at Ascension Seton in Austin - austonia ›
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Our 15-year-old granddaughter and her sister, 12, have spent summer weeks with us, usually separately so that we could better get to know each individually. In visits focused on Austin and Port Aransas, the girls seemed to be developing an affection for Texas.
Houston and Dallas are two great American cities, the 4th and 9th largest, each loaded with cultural treasures, each standing in glittering and starchy contrast to Austin’s more louche, T-shirts and shorts ways.
Three hours up I-35, Dallas loomed before us as a set of gray skyscrapers in a filmy haze, accessed only through a concrete mixmaster of freeways, ramps and exits. I drove with false confidence. Be calm, I said to myself, it will all end in 10 minutes under the hotel entrance canopy. And it did.
The pool at the Crescent Court Hotel in Dallas. (Crescent Court Hotel)
We stayed three nights at the Crescent Court Hotel ($622 a night for two queens), a high-end hotel in Uptown, patronized by women in white blazers, business people in suits, and tall, lean professional athletes, their shiny Escalades and Corvettes darting in and out, and other celebrities like Bill Barr, the former attorney general who shoe-horned his ample self into a Toyota.
Each morning as I walked to Whole Foods for a cappuccino, a fellow identified by a bellman as Billy the Oilman arrived in his Rolls Royce Phantom. Where does he park? “Wherever he wants to. He likes the Starbucks here.”
We garaged our more modest set of wheels for the visit. We were chauffeured for tips by Matt Cooney and Alfonza “The Rev” Scott in the hotel’s black Audi sedan. They drove us to museums, restaurants and past the enclaves of the rich and famous. In Highland Park, The Rev pointed out the homes of the Dallas Cowboys' Jerry Jones and Troy Aikman along with the family compound of the Hunts, oil and gas tycoons.
The Dallas Museum of Art’s “Cartier and Islam” exhibit (until Sept. 18) attracted an older crowd; the nearby Perot Museum of Nature and Science was a powerful whirlpool of kids’ groups ricocheting from the Tyrannosaurus Rex to the oil fracking exhibit. Watch your shins.
A Geogia O'Keeffe oil painting called "Ranchos Church, New Mexico" at the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art. (Rich Oppel)
For us, the best museum was the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, a 50-minute, madcap drive away via a 75 mph toll lane along I-30. Don’t try it during rush hour. The Carter has an exquisite collection of Remington paintings and sculptures and an excellent array of 19th and 20th-century paintings as well. Pick one museum? The Amon Carter. Peaceful, beautiful, uncrowded, free admission and small enough to manage in two hours.
The Fort Worth Stockyards, a place of history (with a dab of schmaltz), fun and good shopping, filled one of our mornings. The 98 acres brand the city as Cowboy Town, with a rodeo and a twice-daily (11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.) cattle drive. We shopped for boots, drank coffee and watched the “herd” of 18 longhorns. So languid was their progress that if this were a real market drive the beef would have been very tough and leathery before it hit the steakhouse dinner plate.
The cattle drive at the Fort Worth Stockyards. (Rich Oppel)
But we could identify: the temperature was 97. “I saw a dog chasing a cat today,” said the emcee, deploying a very old joke. “It was so hot that both were walking.”
With limited time, we chose three very different restaurants:
- Nobu, in the Crescent Court Hotel; Jia, a modern Chinese restaurant in Highland Park; and Joe T. Garcia’s in Fort Worth. Nobu’s exotic Japanese menu set us back $480, with tip, for four (we had a guest), but it was worth it.
- Jia was an ordinary suburban strip mall restaurant, but with good food and a reasonable tab of $110 for four.
- Joe T.’s is an 85-year-old Fort Worth institution (think Matt’s El Rancho but larger), a fine Mexican restaurant where a meal with two drinks was $115.
Sushi at high-end restaurant Nobu. (Crescent Hotel)
It was all a splurge for a grandchild’s visit. Now we will get back to our ordinary road trips of Hampton Inns, where a room rate is closer to the Crescent Court’s overnight parking rate of $52. And to corner cafes in small towns.
Did Dallas change our 15-year-old’s view of Texas? “Yes. I think it’s a lot cooler than I did. The fashion, the food.” So, not only Austin is cool. Take Texas as a whole. It’s a big, complex, diverse and wonderful state.
