WHITE CHOCOLATE PEPPERMINT POPCORN

 

I love recipes like this for this time of year. Super easy, quick and a crowd-pleaser. Every year my book club (of 9 years) does a cookie exchange and one of the girls made this popcorn. With these ingredients I can't imagine there are very many people out there who wouldn't like it. 

WHITE CHOCOLATE PEPPERMINT POPCORN

18-20 cups popcorn
1 6oz box candy canes
1 package of almond bark
1 teaspoon peppermint extract

Place popcorn in a large bowl. Crush candy canes in a food processor and pour over popcorn. Melt almond bark and mix in peppermint extract. Pour almond bark over popcorn and stir until well coated. Spread onto wax paper to harden.

HOMEMADE CITRUS ORNAMENTS

 

I love making homemade ornaments for our Christmas tree. This year my daughter and I stayed up late two weekend nights watching movies and stringing popcorn. I actually had to go out and buy non organic popcorn just for that purpose because the organic popcorn we actually eat is about half the size of the non organic...go figure. 

Citrus ornaments are beautiful and easy to make. They remind me of stained glass when the tree is all lit up and shines through the fruit segments. 

All you need is some citrus fruit...the larger the better. Lemons really are too small if you are decorating a large tree. My two favorites are pomelos and grapefruit. 

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F, slice the fruit as thin as you can. Having a sharp knife really can help this process...as you can see knives are on my Christmas list. And bake the fruit for a few hours, flipping every 30 minutes. My fruit slices were a little on the thick side so it took about 4 hours to dry them out completely. Some pieces took as long as 5 hours. 

Tie a ribbon or twine through one of the dried segments and you have a beautiful natural ornament. 

We also decorated the tree with pheasant feathers...well we are trying to. My husband comes home from hunting weekly and brings me a new supply of feathers to replenish the tree because of my puppy. You see, his life is consumed with hunting and pheasants and he simply cannot resist those feathers sticking out of the tree. He has to have one in his mouth at all times.

PRINTABLE WHITE CHOCOLATE PEPPERMINT POPCORN RECIPE

PRINTABLE HOMEMADE CITRUS ORNAMENTS