Christmas Cookie Bars; Holiday recipe from FOX 11 Living

Welcome back everybody. This is a treat to make if you don't love baking but you want to bake something and seem impressive but you can't mess it up. Okay we've got people on here a lot that do really complicated beautiful desserts. This is simple and easy and delicious and can get you out of a jam because it comes together really fast. So the first thing I'm going to do in a mixer here is I have two sticks of unsalted butter. Soften to room temp. I always give it Now to this we're going to add in a cup of white sugar and a cup of brown sugar and this is just uh-oh did it get hard in the studio? It did. It's okay everybody. I have clean hands. I'm going to do the crumble. All right the rest should be okay. Just a classic kind of chocolate chip cookie base here of just the white and brown sugar and just let that go for a minute. On deck of course a little vanilla and two eggs. Classic classic simple pantry staples. Now I'm going to go ahead and give that a scrape just to make sure everything from the bottom is getting worked in there. You can do this with a hand mixer if you'd like to as well but you know I have an irrational fear of hand mixers. I don't it's psychological. I don't know what it is. I used one once and I swear it just it all went wrong and I've had a fear ever since and I know Amy used to use them for everything and she was so good at it. So sorry it just sits in the drawer. Never gets used. All right now that that's good and combined let's go ahead and add in a little vanilla. I'm also going to go two eggs in there as well. Put those in there. All right here we go. Let's drop one in at a time. Oh just just kidding. They both really wanted to get in there so they're going at the same time. We'll give it another scrape and another whirl around and easy peas. Then I'll get our dry ingredients together. Beautiful. All right so now let's get our dry ingredients together. I have flour. We're going to do half because we used unsalted butter of course. I'm going to do a half a teaspoon. I do you know I love my salt. I do like a rounded half teaspoon. I go a little bigger. You don't have to but that's just how I roll. I just like the the rounded teaspoon so that's going in. We're also going to do baking powder and baking soda. This is a very thick batter. We want the powder to puff. We want the soda to spread. We're using both today. Give that a good whisk and now let's get our dry ingredients mixed in with our wet ingredients. I always do the scrape one more time before I add them in. All right now we're going to get our dry ingredients in here. How much did I lose over the side? Oh hardly any. Never quite no. All right and then just gently bring this together. Now to this while this is gently getting brought together. Chocolate chips. This is where you can just kind of go rogue. I have nuts. I have holiday M&Ms. I have holiday sprinkles. You add in what you like. If you have a kind of chocolate chip you like that looks more holiday-y. If you just want to do the M&Ms. Whatever you want to do. So I'm going to go ahead and throw in the chocolate chips. About two cups or so. I'm kind of in a walnut mood. Let's go ahead and throw some walnuts in here as well. Pecans. Whatever you like to put in there. Perfect and I'm gonna save the colorful stuff. I think I'm just gonna sprinkle that over the top. I make them different every single time for whatever holiday is around. There is a misconception that I can't bake. I can bake. I'm a good baker. It's just not part of my like love language. It's not part of my journey. Like my mom is here today. She shows how much she loves you by baking. Like she sends the grand or the grandkids you know care packages full of banana bread and cookies and you know is always has something at her house for my kids to snack on and the neighbors her neighbors get so many baked goods and that's her love language. Most bakers who love to bake that's their love language. It's not mine. I'd rather make an appetizer but I do I do I like to eat baked goods and I and I can bake. It's just not really part of my journey every day. Oh hold on. She folded out. So here's a little trick I like to do just to make life easier to pull them all out is put the parchment on the bottom like this and then it holds over the sides and then you can just easily get it out. Now look how thick this is. It says cookie dough. We're baking one huge giant cookie here. So we're gonna go ahead and get all that in there. We're gonna pat it down and then you can top it with sprinkles, M&Ms. You're gonna bake this at 350 for about 20 to 25 minutes till it's golden. I didn't do this very well but all I'm gonna do now is sprinkle it with the M&Ms and then I'll really kind of push it in kind of gilding the lily here with extra sugar but it's the holidays so here we are and some sprinkles and when it comes out it's gonna look like this. Isn't she pretty? Now to go with this we need a nice cup of coffee and with our coffee we need some coffee creamer. So two cups of half and half or whole milk from Lamer's and then I want to get they are so famous for their eggnog this holiday season because it's so good. So Abby and I were just talking about how much of this we have in our house right now. One cup of that just to give that eggnog flavor. We're gonna add a couple of those eggnog spices in there too though. We're gonna get some cinnamon and nutmeg. This is so simple you all this is just the easiest coffee creamer and then I'm gonna add in four tablespoons of sweetened condensed milk which I'm sure you have in your house right now because it is a baking season. That's one, two and you can always adjust keep this open if you taste it and go I could use that a little bit sweeter just add a little bit more sweetened condensed milk and then finally a little bit of vanilla or vanilla bean paste. Just a good glug that's what I always add to my coffee creamers. Such a good thing to have in your house. Whisk all that together. Sarah thank you. Sarah brought me a cup of coffee. Put it in a mason jar. Put it in you can find little containers like this whatever you got laying around. I usually have some sort of mason jar with a pour spout on it. If you've never had eggnog in your coffee before you are missing out and the Lamer's you're gonna want to swing by and grab some. It is so good. Oh sorry Sarah. Sarah's like hello. Look at Sarah's arm everybody. Cheers. Cheers my dears. Happy holidays. All right let's give this a try. See how we feel about it. It's so good. It just tastes like the holidays. The cinnamon. Isn't that so good? This with this perfect combination. To me afternoon snack. I hope you try it. It's so easy and it's cute and it's fun and delicious and makes the house just feel more like the holidays. All right we got more to come in today's show. Nicole from Petal Pusher is sharing an easy holiday centerpiece idea and my mama's here. She's going to share her gingerbread cake recipe. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.