holiday cookie swap

I know you all know how I have some pretty nice coworkers. I managed to get a small group of them to do a holiday cookie swap at the office, thanks to the help of one of my coworkers, Chris, who shared the idea. It was my very first cookie swap and it was so much fun to see what people came up with.

There were eight of us total and I think everyone came up with really neat treats. Funny how none of us did something easy like chocolate chip cookies.

Chris's fudge

Karoline's ginger cookies

Jeff's coconut macaroons

Tom's molasses cookies

Nathan's rum balls

Antoinette's snickerdoodle cookies

Anne's walnut ball cookies

Everything was delicious! And I love the creative packaging that people came up with. I ended up making those pretzel Rolo pecan treats which, I know wasn't technically a "cookie" per se.

I think the neatest thing that came out of the cookie swap was getting to know some of my coworkers a little better and that we share a passion for baking. One of them commented about how he doesn't like to bake/make things unless he has a purpose so it got me to thinking about doing some sort of monthly cookie swap. Like maybe every third Wednesday a month, if you wanted to participate, you'd bring in 2 dozen cookies/treats to the swap. Then depending on how many people showed up, we'd divi up the goodies for everyone to share and enjoy. After I presented the idea to this coworker, he added the idea where participants could not repeat any cookie/treat that was brought before therefore adding a challenge to be creative and try new [different] recipes. I'll have to see if I can make this happen. :)

pretzel rolo pecan treats

Holy crappers, where did the year go?? To make up for my lack of posting I thought I'd share this recipe for a super easy peasy pretzel Rolo pecan treat that I learned from my husband's aunt Elaine last weekend. Super easy peasy! And super yummy according to my at-home-taste-tester and obliging coworkers. :)

Ingredients:

- a bag of Snyder's butter snap pretzels
- a bag of Rolo candies
- whole, shelled pecans

Directions:

- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Place a piece of foil or parchment paper onto a baking sheet.
- Lay whole pieces of pretzels onto the sheet in one layer.
- Unpeel some Rolos (seriously, this is the hardest part!)
- Refrain from eating a lot of the Rolos. One or two, yes. Handful, no.
- Put one Rolo on top of each pretzel.
- Put one whole pecan piece on top of the Rolo.
- Bake in the oven for 3 minutes (no, not the most efficient use of a 350 degree oven, I know ...)
- Remove from the oven and smoosh each pecan down so that the Rolo gets flattened.
- Let them cool down and then put them in the fridge to harden.
- Enjoy!!