Delicious: Recipes I Tested After Thanksgiving

I know, I know- you're supposed to cook everything BEFORE Thanksgiving and then enjoy the leftovers all weekend. But my family always eats with our neighbor's family and they take over on the cooking. So I had to spend Friday and Saturday testing out some of the recipes I wanted to try. But it was delicious time spent in the kitchen!

Friday, I woke up and made pumpkin pancakes for my family to try another pumpkin recipe. It was super delicious and tasted vaguely like the pumpkin pie I had enjoyed the day before. Apparently, though, I left the picture on my mom's camera. But trust me, you should make them TOMORROW. They are so easy and super tasty!

After shopping a little in the late morning because crazy shopping in the morning is not my thing, I mixed up some apple cider vinaigrette for a salad with leftover turkey and radishes.  It was a light, refreshing salad to combat the overeating from Thursday!

I also whipped up some spice cookie dough to freeze until I get home in December from the December Martha Stewart magazine. We mixed some up for rolled and cut cookies and some for thumbprints. The pan wasn't big enough to freeze all of the thumbprints, so we just HAD to bake up the remaining three cookies and topped them with key lime marmalade. Yum!

On Saturday, I mixed up some pumpkin biscotti from Gimme Some Oven, but I used Heath bar pieces instead of nuts because my mom doesn't like nuts in baked goods. Go figure. So the biscotti taste more like Heath bars than pumpkin, but are great for a snack.

I also mixed up some of my favorite gingerbread cookie recipe to freeze for Christmas time. The recipe is actually from one of the little box kits at Barnes and Noble with the tiny gingerbread house, but here it is:

Gingerbread Recipe

Ingredients:

1 c vegetable shortening

1 c sugar

1 c dark molasses or corn syrup

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

1 tsp ginger

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp cinnamon

4 or 4 ½ cup flour

Melt the first 3 ingredients in the microwave.  Stir in the next 5 ingredients.  Then stir in the flour, one cup at a time. (You may want to use an electric mixer on the last cup as the dough gets quite thick and hard to stir).  Split the dough into manageable balls and wrap in plastic wrap.

Refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour. Preheat the oven to 375°

Roll the dough, working with half of a batch at a time on a lightly floured work surface with floured hands.  Knead the dough until smooth.  Place a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet and roll the dough to 1/8 inches thick.

Dust the cookie cutters in flour so they don’t stick.  Bake the cookies for 6-10 minutes or until they are not over-soft when lightly touched.  Transfer to a baking rack and let cool completely.

Oh, and I whipped up this super delicious cranberry pomegranate sauce from Gimme Some Oven. It is really tart, but simple to put together and cook.

And I whipped up some peppermint mint marshmallows and will post a picture when I start handing them out as early Christmas presents with hot chocolate! Beware, though, making marshmallows is quite a process- messy and time consuming but so worth it!

Have a wonderful week!