DIY Wednesday: Christmas Goodies!

This has been a crazy week already, and it's only Wednesday!! I stayed up much too late a couple nights over the weekend, which left me feeling tired and unprepared for the work week. Pair that up with my sick, aging puppy and a crabby teething baby.....and you can see why there's a lack of posts on my part this week.

But, never fear......DIY Wednesday is here!! Today I thought I would share a couple of my favorite recipes with you! These recipes are great year-round, but they're both so delish that these two always make my Christmas Goodie roster. And if you're really lucky, you'll be tasting some of these treats very soon :)

Banana Bread Bites

3 ripe bananas

1/3 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 tsp vanilla

1 tbsp cinammon (optional)

1 tsp baking soda

pinch of salt

1 1/2 cups flour

1. Preheat oven to 350

2. Mash bananas (you can use a fork, blender, mixer, spoon, whatever)

3. Melt butter, and mix into bananas

4. Add sugar, egg, and vanilla

5. Sprinkle baking soda and salt over mixture, and mix in well

6. Add flour and mix well

7. Pour mixture into greased loaf pan or cupcake tray

8. Bake 1 hour for loaf, or 25-30 minutes for cupcake size

**This is my favorite banana bread recipe because it's so simple!! I like to add cinammon because it's yummy, but that's my own spin on a very common recipe. Also, every time I try to bake this as a loaf, I can never seem to get it to cook all the way through. So I decided to make mini-cupcake sized bites, and it worked wonderfully!! You don't even need a special pan, just line up the cupcake liners on a cookie sheet, fill them half way, and bake for about 12 minutes. They cook through evenly, and are the perfect size for gift-giving (or portion control lol)!

Snow-Top Chocolate Mint Cookies

1 1/2 cups flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

6 tbsp butter, softened

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp mint or peppermint flavoring

powdered sugar

1. Mix flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and set aside

2. Melt 1 cup of the chocolate chips, set aside

3. With mixer, beat butter on medium-high for 30 seconds. Add sugar and beat until combined.

4. Add melted chocolate, eggs, vanilla, and mint and beat until combined

5. Slowly add flour mixture and beat until combined.

6. Stir in remaining chocolate chips

7. Cover dough and leave to chill in freezer for 30 minutes

8. Preheat oven to 350

9. Shape dough into 1 inch balls, and roll in powdered sugar to coat

10. place dough 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet, bake for 10-12 minutes or until tops are crackled

11. Leave on cookie sheet for 2 minutes (otherwise they will fall apart!) then transfer to a wire rack to cool

**OMG these are my favorite cookies ever!! They are ooey-gooey like a brownie, and anything with the words mint and chocolate in the same sentence have got to be good!! They're a little more labor-intensive than I would like, but they are pretty fool-proof if you follow the directions closely. I make these every single year.....and if I can do it, then you can do it too!!

~Amanda