Traditions: in our house we don’t have many Christmas traditions. There are some from our childhood that both my husband and I kept, and some we didn’t. We hang and fill stockings, we build a fire Christmas eve day and keep it going all day, and have a really low key Christmas eve night. As of now there is only one thing we have done each and every year since my son was born – we make/bake something for Santa!
The first few years we left out cookies from the store, did you know Santa loves Oreos? The last three years we’ve made baked goods from scratch.
Last year was dreamy cream scones from Smitten Kitchen’s recipe, here. We never have currents in the house, but we ALWAYS have cranberries, and holy guacamole these scones are amazing with cranberries.
The years before that we made and decorated traditional sugar cookies, but “Santa” gets tired of having always the same cookie and asked us to switch it up. This year we really changed it up and made home-made donuts! I was surprised at how good they were since it was the first time ever I had made donuts. I had received a donut pan as a gift forever ago, rediscovered it while cleaning out some drawers. Bonus! it came with a recipe on the sleeve! Granted these were baked and not fried, but they were still good.
Now. Anyone who knows me, knows I’m an avid home cook, but I’m not a baker. I have basic baking spices that I keep on hand, but not as extensive a selection as my cooking spices. I ALWAYS have cinnamon because I LOVE cinnamon/sugar toast.
Not checking the pantry, I started the recipe. I had out all the ingredients, mixed up all the dry ones in one bowl, got all the wet ones in another bowl, and went to get the spices. Guess what I didn’t have in my pantry. ugh. you got it – cinnamon AND nutmeg. WHAT the heck?? I sat down and wracked my brain to figure out what to do next; my baker neighbor was out of town, the stores were already closed as it was 6pm Christmas eve. Ohhhh – right.! I have oils! Months ago I purchased all the oils needed to make “masala chai in a drop”! I have cinnamon oil, I have nutmeg oil! One drop of each and I was back on track.
Bubs and I finished up the recipe, baked and glazed them. We used a Nutella spread as a glaze for a couple, and those were good. But. We had a few leftover hand-picked wild blueberries from our vacation in New London, NH last summer and I plopped them into the final two donuts. We topped these two with a home-made vanilla glaze and IMO these were the best of the bunch.
Of course! I forgot to take a photo of the final product, but believe me they were delicious! There are a couple of unglazed ones in the photo with the blueberry donuts, and you can almost see them in this picture with Santa, reading the note we left him.
I’m sure in the future we will be adding more traditions as Bubs gets older and wants to include more into our routine. What traditions do you have in your family/families? Have you created any of your own, or carried forward traditions from your childhood? I’d love to know more of what others do around the holidays, drop a note in the comments and let us know!
