Wine Infused Wednesdays

This week we recap the last weeks festivities. Hopefully y’all had a great Thanksgiving weekend. Mine… well it was eventful.

For starters I flew all the way from New England to the West Coast… well almost all the way. I stopped just short of the California line in Vegas. Which for a gambler would be a great stop… for me, the non-gambler, anti-smoker, social drinker was just… well another city. The commute was long, tiring, and just plain exhausting in every way possible.

But that’s not what Wino Wednesdays are about. So lets get to the Thanksgiving feast festivities. . .

I started my “vacay” off with GLUTEN FREE EVERYTHING. Ha! Ummm… Traveling is hard GF. But once I landed I basically just started buying loads of GF things to make myself at home… in madre’s kitchen. I quickly got frustrated because thanksgiving used to be at my house… so then I wouldn’t have had to BUY all NEW things… because I have it all. But alas I moved. So here’s my menu of baked items for the holidays!

Peppermint Brownies:

This is my annual treat that I like to make. This year I needed to improvise with a packaged brownie mix. . . Don’t get me wrong. I routinely USE a box mix. But I don’t always. This year I just didn’t have the time to mix a batch from scratch. But I always crumble up candy canes and sprinkle on top. Best. Addition. Ever.

Sugar Cookies:

I always make these… But I usually always make these from scratch scratch. This year I used a premade mix. They turned out okay, but I like my batches better. But really its all in the frosting. Every year my challenge is to get the frosting to be LESS runny. This I’m just burnt out. So I…(*gulp*) bought frosting. I know I know…. bad baker. Oh well life moves on. .

(Don’t mind the lack of frosting on the photo… they were still delish)

Chocolate Chip Cookies W/ & w/O Peppermint:

My other Christmas tradition is GF chocolate chip cookies. This batch I split between some peppermint and some not. I was running out of time since I had to cram Thanksgiving and Christmas in 1 week. They turned out okay, but I learned I don’t like my mom’s darker nonstick baking sheets. They burned my cookies 🙁

This is my holiday tradition… usually more of a Christmas time thing. But since I’m not going home for Christmas I had to squeeze everything in. One week and DONE. Woot!