Last weekend I was in a crafty mood so I asked some friends if they'd be interested in making Christmas candy. Ruthie and Jamie were. Because I don't have a baby, and Jamie's is still super portable (being in utero), we went to Ruthie's for the day.

We made three projects: chocolate-dipped candy canes for stirring hot chocolate, cider, or coffee; peppermint patties; and chocolate mice. This required lots of Bakers microwavable dipping chocolate and sugar!

We started with peppermint patties, using this recipe from the Kitchn. Besides being utterly wrong about the process taking 30 minutes (ha!) it was a great recipe. We mixed the ingredients in a mixer, and then made the patties by hand. The long part was that as the peppermint mixture got warm, it would get soft and lose its shape. We were constantly rotating cookie sheets in and out of the fridge.


While the patties were chilling we started the mice. This is a specialty of Ruthie's! You dip maraschino cherries (with stems attached) in chocolate, stick on a kiss for the head, and add sliced almonds for the ears. They are adorable.

Next came the peppermint sticks. I couldn't find regular sticks (I was thinking King Leo), so we used candy canes instead. This was super easy -- dip and sprinkle with nonpariels -- and the results were pretty cute. I gave a bundle of these Saturday night as a hostess gift at a Christmas Party Kyle and I went to.

Now comes the fancy part. We were doing a little bit of everything at once, so the white chocolate was out while we made the mice and Jamie revealed some really impressive decorating skills. First she painted eyes -- whites AND irises -- on all the mice (we made about 90) with a chop stick.
Then she decorated our peppermint patties after we'd dunked them initially in the dark chocolate.

Through all the excitement, Miss Lily was fantastic. She slept for a while, ate, and then was passed around to be loved on, gurgling and making sweet baby noises. She's very agreeable.