Posted originally on the CTH on December 18, 2023 | Menagerie

How about a thread for party food and treats? Lots of people are entertaining in these last days running up to Christmas. Sometimes in our family we just have a night or two where we serve appetizers or favorite party treats, even if it is just a few of us here.

I shared this recipe last year for venison meatballs.

Of course you can use beef, but it isn’t nearly as good. I never have recipes, except for breads or cakes, so just have fun with this.

Saute an onion and several large cloves of garlic, finely chopped, in olive oil or butter until onions begin to be translucent. Add a tablespoon or two of red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, and seasonings you like to taste. I use three onion seasoning by Epicure.

Mix a pound and a half of ground venison with a half pound ground pork, an egg, bread crumbs or almond meal, and the onion mixture. Shape into small balls and bake at 375 until brown, which should take around 25 minutes, but check on them to be sure. Every oven is different. Drain and serve with your favorite sauce.

Here’s the link to a recipe for mini corn muffins with a cheddar filling. Being a Southern gal, I absolutely refuse to put sugar in my cornbread, so I’ll be leaving that ingredient out, but that’s an argument for another day. These would go very well with the meatballs.

Here’s a recipe shared with me by Treeper maryfrommarin. It’s from the cookbook Keeping the Feast, which is organized around the church’s liturgical feasts. It’s a collection of recipes from the women of St. Thomas Church, Episcopal, Abingdon, Virginia. I chose this recipe because when I was growing up, no southern hostess ever had a party or luncheon without these.

Miss Annie White’s Cheese Biscuits

1/2 pound cheese

1/2 pound butter

1/2 pound flour (about two cups)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon red pepper

1 egg white

75 whole pecans

Grind cheese. Cream cheese and butter. Add flour, salt, and pepper. Work well. Roll thin and cut with a small biscuit cutter. Brush with egg white and place one whole pecan on top of each biscuit. Bake on cookie sheet at 425 until light brown, about 7 minutes.

Yield: approximately 75.

On to sweeter things.

I am sharing some lengthier (and fancier) recipes below. I have copies of the pages from some old cookbooks, so I no longer even know where they came from, and I can’t credit the original authors. I tried to google these two recipes, and come up with similar things, but they just don’t look as good, or I’d just link them.

First, have you ever heard of a Croquembouche Christmas tree? I hadn’t either, and while this looks so elegant and beautiful, if you read the directions, it seems quite doable. It’s made from individual cream puffs around a white foam core, put together with melted white chocolate. I have kept this recipe for years, but I haven’t made it yet. Too good to get rid of though!

Since I’m typing this out, with the help of pictures provided by my favorite Pud, Ad rem, I am not including the recipe for pastry cream and making the cream puffs, you can google those. If I make it, I plan to just buy cream puffs, and start from there. I seriously doubt my guys would know, or care.

Ingredients and supplies:

white foam cone, white parchment paper or clear plastic wrap, six large white chocolate bars, shortening, white and silver edible glitter, cream puffs, serving tray.

Wrap the cone with white parchment paper and secure with straight pins, or wrap with clear plastic wrap. Place on large serving platter. Melt 6 cups white chocolate bars and 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon shortening in saucepan over low heat.

Beginning at the base of the cone, dip puffs into melted chocolate and position them side by side, forming a ring. Continue layers, stacking each successive ring up the tree. You may need to reheat the chocolate.

Drizzle remaining chocolate over the tree and add edible silver and white glitter. Chill up to two hours before serving.

Next, we have a pine cone Christmas cake. This one is really cool, and delicious. I have made it, and if you’d  like a very special dessert that just makes your table, this one is it! Practice on those pinecone petals! There’s a technique to learn.

This one is by Rose Levy Berenbaum. There are some videos out there, I didn’t have time to go through them. The only one I watched didn’t have the recipe on it, it was part of an old news clip. You may find one though.

Ingredients:

18 oz unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

10 eggs

2 cups sugar

1/3 cup unbleached flour

1/4 cup brandy

Frosting: use your favorite dark chocolate frosting here. I’m too lazy to type the steps on this one, but the recipe has chopped nuts soaked in orange liqueur or cognac folded in, if you’d like to add that.

Melt the butter and chocolate in a double boiler. Separate the eggs into large bowls. Beat yolks lightly, gradually add sugar. Beat until fluffy, then stir into chocolate mixture, mixing well, and a beat in brandy and flour.

Clean beaters and mix egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gently fold in about 1/4 of them to the cake mix. Then gradually add the rest, gently folding in. Do not over stir it and deflate the egg whites.

Grease two 9×13 cake pans, line with parchment, and grease and flour parchment. Pour batter evenly into pans and smooth with spatula. Bake at 375 for 20 minutes or until cake puffs up and springs back when gently pressed. Let cake cool a few minutes on racks before unmolding, peeling off paper, and cooling on racks.

Use butcher’s paper to make two identical pinecone oval shapes, and cut out the cakes. Crumble the cake scraps and add them and nuts if desired to the frosting. Spread a generous third of the frosting on one cake layer, top with the second, then frost the sides and top with remaining frosting.

To make pinecone petals:

Tape a sheet of parchment paper to counter. Set out a small metal spatula or table knife. Chop 8 ounces semi or bittersweet chocolate coarsely and melt in double boiler to temp of 120 on candy thermometer. Stir vigorously to cool the chocolate slightly and keep over hot water as you work. I did the melting in two batches to keep it from setting.

Dab the spatula into chocolate and press down slightly on parchment, pressing down and drawing the spatula toward you into a petal shape, thinner on one end, about 1” x 3/4”. They won’t all be exactly the same size and shape, and that’s okay. Keep making petals until you’ve used all the chocolate. You need lots, and it takes awhile to make them all.

To place the petals, start at the base, using tweezers to keep from melting the chocolate. Stagger the rows like shingles on a house. If you like, place pine nuts under some of the petals.

The only problem with this cake is that it will break your heart when you have to cut it!

Back at Thanksgiving I had numerous requests for a favorite cookie recipe in our family. As I said, I got this from my Aunt Gay, but it was not her original recipe. They are called chocolate buttersweets, and I used to find the recipe, which we modified, on Pillsbury’s site, but they’ve removed the link. Here’s the original recipe.

We always use pecans, and I do not add the coconut. I’ve had dozens of people, and that’s not an exaggeration, tell me over the years that they don’t like cream cheese, or pecans, or whatever. No one has ever been able to stop eating these.

And here’s a tip for the time and cooking challenged. These are still really good if you use Pillsbury sugar cookies, make the filling, and top with chocolate almond bark. I put a lot more filling on the cookie than shown. I add unsweetened chocolate into the almond bark. The darker, the better on the chocolate topping. And I don’t just drizzle on chocolate, I cover the cookie. Not pretty, but wow, so good.

The recipe says to fill the cookies while warm, but actually I chill the filling and use a cookie scoop to top cold cookies. Often I make the cookies days ahead, then when I am ready, I put them out on a double layer of waxed paper, fill, and then top.

I usually make hundreds of these a year, so it gets to be an assembly line for me, and usually I wrangle family help. Make twice, nope, three or four times what you think you want. And like I said at Thanksgiving, don’t trust family to deliver someone else’s cookie box. Not ever gonna happen, not with these cookies.

Also, I promised Aunt Gay’s Chex Mix. She called it nuts and bolts. This is a buttery mix, so if you like your mix drier, reduce the butter and spices proportionately.

Mix together 4 sticks melted butter (I changed from margarine), 1 tablespoon each onion salt, celery salt, and garlic salt, 3/4 teaspoon garlic powder, 4 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce. Pour the above mixture over:

1/2 box Wheat Chex, 1/2 box Corn Chex, 1/2 box Rice Chex, 1/3 box Cheerios, 1/2 bag of pretzel sticks, 3-4 cups of nuts. I use pecan halves and cashews. You have to keep stirring the butter mixture as you are pouring. I use a big throwaway roasting pan for this. It’s a great gift!

Bake 2 hours at 250*, stirring every 15 minutes. Nowadays I smoke mine at 250.

This is my own wassail recipe. It makes a small crockpot full, and the non wassail fans inhaled it, and fought over the last drops! I plan to double it for Christmas. Which means I’ll double the spices too.

Clear American Pineapple Orange Sparkling Juice, 17 Fl Oz Bottle
Single serving bottle of apple juice
Quart of cranberry juice (unsweetened)
Agave nectar to taste
Cranberries (whole, added about a cup)
Two cinnamon sticks
1 tablespoon allspice berries

Combine in crockpot and heat on low 3-4 hours. I also plan to add star anise and pineapple or orange slices at Christmas. You can use the sweetener of your choice, of course. This was festive and delicious. I also like to add cognac.

I hope you find joy in your preparations and celebrations. Pause and remember the real reasons we have such a joy filled season of anticipation.