Brown Sugar Kielbasa

Brown Sugar Kielbasa Ingredients:

1 (16 ounce) package kielbasa
1 pound bacon
1 cup brown sugar, or to taste

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Cut bacon into halves and wrap each strip around the kielbasa.
3. Arrange on a baking sheet and sprinkle liberally with brown sugar.
4. Bake until bacon is crisp and the brown sugar melted.

This was very good. Great with baked beans and it would be perfect for a BBQ.

Royal Shortbread Cookies

2 1/2 cups flour, sifted
3/4 cup superfine sugar
A couple pinches of salt
1 1/2 cups room temperature unsalted butter

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine the flour, sugar and salt in a mixing bowl. Work in the butter with a fork or pastry cutter until the dough has the consistency of short crust. I ended up using my hands to make sure the dough was mixed well.

Sprinkle a board or your counter top lightly with flour. Turn the dough onto the board and knead until it's smooth. Refrigerate the dough for a couple of hours or overnight (I refrigerated the dough overnight but found that the dough was too cold and hard when I went to work with it).

Grease a cookie pan. Roll out the dough 1/8th inch thick and form the cookies how you want them. I cut them out into stars but I found the dough was a real pain to work with even with a ton of flour. Forming them into small flat balls probably would have been easier. Bake for about 15 minutes (watch them, they burn very fast as I discovered). Let cookies cool.

Melt semi-sweet chocolate chips in microwave. Dip half of each cookie in the chocolate and place on foiled cookies sheet. Let cool in fridge. Melt white chocolate chips in microwave. Use a small spoon to drizzle over the chocolate dipped half of the cookie.

New Year's Eve Cocktail

Ok so we were having some guests over for New Years Eve and I wanted to concoct a festive drink for the evening. I got a recipe from Gourmet that involved the word "macerate" and a lot of raspberries. We bought the raspberries and a whole lot of other food and by the time we got to the liquor store I was like, "Macerate? Do I look like frickin Martha Stewart?"

So this is what I ended up doing:
1/2oz. Chambered
Top with Champagne
Throw some raspberries in there

Done.

Refreshing and festive.