Holiday Treat Boxes!

I recently blogged over at The Chirping Moms about planning our holiday treat boxes. It took us around 6.5 hours to get everything baked, cooled and packaged. We prepared 13 boxes total.

Here are notes on each of the recipes!

Mint Chocolate Chip Brownies - We doubled the recipe, which yielded 5 1/2 dozen mini brownies (baked in mini cupcake tins). We added 1 bag of mini chocolate chips. We substituted the mint chocolate chips for Andes Creme de Menthe pieces. We baked for 14-16 minutes.

Mini Gingerbread Whoopie Pies - Instead of spooning out the batter, my sister used a piping bag to pipe out the cakes. They turned out so cute! We also omitted the crystallized ginger.

S'mores Bark - We added crushed graham crackers to the top to add texture and visual interest. My sister used a culinary blow torch to "roast" the marshmallows instead of broiling. We also let it harden in the freezer for 30 minutes instead of an hour in the refrigerator.

Pecan Pie Bars - We used pecan halves instead of chopped pecans. I layered them on top of the filling instead of mixing in.

Chocolate Covered Pretzel Rods - We used pretzel twists instead of rods. My sister liked the chocolate to salty ratio better on these! The pretzel rods get a little dry while the twists are perfect size bites!

I made a few general notes that I hope you find helpful!

• Next time, we will order and prep our packing material in advanced! We raided our Dollar Tree today, purchasing cellophane bags, tags etc. Then I wrote out labels for each item. Our boxes were not the most aesthetically pleasing!
• I highly recommend you put on some fun music. I suppose the normal people would put on Christmas music. Us? The Mandy Moore Pandora station. We even had a sing-a-long to "Never Had a Dream Come True" by S Club 7.
• While we did get everything done in one day, I highly recommend you spread this out over two. Your legs and sanity will thank you!

And now! For the good stuff. The pictures!

I delivered boxes to some of our friends today. It was wonderful to bring a little cheer and a hello!

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and Happy Holidays!