3 Delicious Holiday Recipes!

Hi friends!! I am so excited to share three holiday recipes with you today! These are some of my absolute favorites to make, and maybe one (or all of them!) will become some of your holiday traditions too! They mean so much to me and my family, and I’m so excited to share a glimpse of our holiday recipes with you!

Starbucks Eggnog Truffles

I’m really excited about this first recipe because it isn’t a beverage but it DOES include coffee – here, we’ve got Eggnog Latte Truffles! I love that you can do more with Starbucks Holiday Coffees than drink them. Although, I’m not giving up my morning cup of their Peppermint Mocha Latte for anything 😉

For this recipe, you’ll mix together Starbucks Veranda coffee with eggnog (or almond nog!), and add in some nutmeg, butter and white chocolate for an incredibly delicious treat. In a separate dish, melt more white chocolate to drizzle on top, and add sprinkles for a festive look! To balance the sweet of these delectable truffles, I find that a cup of freshly brewed Starbucks coffee on the side makes for a perfect pairing. Other sweet treats that I love to pair with coffee, especially around the holidays, are orange cream cookies or a slice of apple pie. Yum!!

Ingredients

• 1 tsp ground Starbucks Coffee – your preferred blend is fine, but I made this with the Veranda blend ground coffee
• 1/3 cup eggnog or almond nog
•  1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 4 tbsp butter
• 2 cups white chocolate (about one bag)

Recipe

• Warm your eggnog in a pot on the stove and add Starbucks coffee grounds until it combines into a creamy cup. Then, add in 1/2 cup of white chocolate, nutmeg and butter. Heat on lowest setting.
• Stir constantly until completely melted, and transfer to a bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours until the mixture is cooled and solid.
• Once cooled, scoop into tablespoon-sized balls and roll. Once all of your truffles are rolled, return to the freezer.
• Melt remaining chocolate in a pot and coat truffles completely. Cover with sprinkles or a dash of nutmeg. You can also drizzle any extra white chocolate over top!
• When the shells have hardened, they’re ready to eat!

If you missed my post about holiday drinks last week, make sure to check that out here! I used the Starbucks Peppermint Mocha Latte K-Cups to create 3 separate delicious drinks for a holiday beverage bar! These recipes all put me in the holiday spirit!!! It’s funny how scents and flavors can transport you to a certain time in your life for a certain holiday. And these drinks do that for me. You also can check out the entire Starbucks line at grocery stores near you!

My Friend Lisa’s Cranberry Sauce

I grew up thinking that cranberry sauce was disgusting. Ha! No, really! And now it’s what I look forward to more than anything at my holiday dinners. This recipe was passed on from my friend Lisa who is basically like family to me. Because I spent most of my adult life in California and my family lives on the East Coast, I haven’t spent Thanksgiving with them in years. Usually, I would visit them during other parts of the year because the air travel was so much less expensive than flying on actual Thanksgiving. So, my friends Lisa and Mith sort of took me in on Thanksgiving every year and out of the last 10 Thanksgivings I think I’ve spent seven with them. It’s become our little yearly tradition to spend Thanksgiving together!

She always would make this cranberry sauce recipe every year, and it’s now such a tradition to me that I made sure that I have it every year on Thanksgiving and Christmas, even when I am not with her! I met her when I was working at Facebook, and that’s actually where she got this recipe! She spent an afternoon baking with a Facebook pastry chef and has been using it ever since! Here are her recipe cards!

Ingredients

• 1 bag of fresh cranberries
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup fresh orange juice
• 1/4 cup Grand Marnier
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp All Spice
• 1 tsp salt

German Spaetzle

Spaetzle is a German noodle dish that my grandmother made every holiday dinner for our family growing up. It screams holidays to me. And when she knew her end was getting near, she passed her 75+ year old noodle press down to me (it might even be 100+ years old). It’s from Germany and her mother gave it to her. I cannot even begin to explain how important this noodle press and recipe is to me. You guys know how much my grandmother means to me and the impact she has had on my life. I have a tattoo in her handwriting from a quote she always used to say, and my daughter is named after her.

So how do you use this noodle press to create your holiday recipes? You essentially hold over the hot water to push the dough through to the water to cook the noodles. It is so special to me and someday I plan to pass it down to Molly or Riley. Whoever loves special noodles more! Ha! They both already love them!

Not a lot of people will have this press passed down from their grandparents, but you can buy them online for pretty cheap. Just google: Spaetzle Noodle Maker. And this is a really impressive dish to make for when you have guests over, especially because they probably haven’t had it before.

My grandmother used to make it and put beef stew over the top, but I have always just enjoy eating them with butter and parmesan cheese. Even back when I used to eat meat, I just wanted Parmesan cheese and butter on them. Spoken like a girl who is obsessed with her pasta. Ha!

Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup of milk
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 pinch ground white pepper
• 1/2 tsp of salt
• 1 gallon of hot water
• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

Recipe

• In a mixing bowl, add together your flour, salt, white pepper, and nutmeg. Stir!
• In a separate bowl, beat the eggs well.
• Begin pouring some of the beaten eggs into the dry mixture. Mix. Alternate and add some milk. Mix. Repeat these steps until you’ve added all the eggs and milk. Mix until smooth.
• If you have one, press your dough through spaetzle maker, or you can use a large holed sieve or metal grater.
• Drop a few at a time into simmering water. Cook 5 to 8 minutes. Drain well.
• Saute cooked spaetzle in butter or margarine.
• Sprinkle chopped fresh parsley on top and serve.

I hope you guys love these recipes! When I say they bring joy to me and my family I absolutely mean it! And quite frankly, I don’t only reserve them for the holidays. Isn’t it funny how some things, like cranberry sauce, we think can only be eaten during Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner? It always makes me laugh that I talk about how much I love Thanksgiving dinner when eating it, but really most of the holiday recipes are things I could cook every single day if I really wanted to! I hope you guys enjoy these not only for the holidays, but anytime you feel like you want that holiday feeling! What are some of your family’s favorite recipes?! I would love for you guys to share them with me in the comments below!