whole foods — Blog - Parsley and Pom Poms

I spent the last few nights in NOLA celebrating my girlfriend Roxie's bachelorette. We had a wonderful time. I won't mention too many details about the trip, but we thoroughly enjoyed the food and drinks in New Orleans. We ate dinner at Seaworthy and Sylvain, brunched at Wilma Jean and Commander's Palace, munched on beignets from Cafe du Monde, and of course tried pork belly, shrimp, and roast beef Po'boys from a few different places.

I brought along some colorful celebratory cookies to have back at the house for when we weren't eating a million other snacks. These were simple to make, as I didn't use a homemade recipe. Sometimes, you just don't need homemade, especially in a time crunch!

Instructions:

I divided pre-made Pillsbury sugar cookie dough and rolled into small balls and flattened with my hands. I varied the cookie sizes, the smallest being the size of a dime. Once the cookies were baked and cooled, I prepped the cookie icing. When following the directions to heat the icing, I only zapped in microwave for 10 seconds on 50% heat. I also let the icing sit for a minute before beginning to spread onto the cookies. Most importantly, I used a tooth pick to evenly divide and spread the onto the cookies. The alphabet cookie cutters and icing came from Michael's Craft Store. The icing portion part of this project took the longest, so give yourself a little time to work on this if you are making a lot of the confetti cookies. In the end, they are fun and worth it!

This weekend was full of champagne, sweets, and lots of other food and drinks. I think I am in need of a little detox these next few weeks! xo RCN

I am a huge matcha green tea fan. I have been wanting to create a dessert with matcha powder for some time, now. I mean, matcha is green. It's a perfect natural food coloring and flavor to include in some sweet treats for Christmas. This fudge recipe is super simple. If you are not a matcha fan, you can easily omit the powder and replace with a splash of green food coloring and you will get the same look, yet different flavor. Without matcha, the fudge will be vanilla, not bad. You may want to add a splash of vanilla extract, as well, if removing the matcha from the recipe. Eat up and be merry! xo RCN

Recipe yields about 24-26 fudge pops. You will need the following:

13 Wooden popsicle sticks, cut in half

4 Mini candy canes, crushed/smashed with a large knife

1/4 cup (or less) shredded coconut, can be sweetened or unsweetened

2 Tbsp of green matcha powder, I used U Matcha Natural green tea powder from Whole Foods

2 Tbsp unsalted butter

1/2 Cup heavy whipping cream

14oz White chocolate morsels, I used Ghirardelli chips, (just over 1 1/2 cups)

8" or similar size small square baking pan, line with wax paper

Small saucepan

Sifter (for matcha powder)

Rubber spatula

Prep by cutting popsicle sticks in half. Crush and smash candy canes into small pieces for topping. Chop butter into small pieces, similar in size to white chocolate chips. Line square pan with wax paper OR use a freezer ziplock bag to line pan, like me, if you are out of wax paper.

In small saucepan on stove, begin heating whipping cream on medium heat. The cream will heat quickly, you will want to stir with rubber spatula as it heats up. As soon as it begins to bubble, remove from heat and add chocolate and butter. Mix the butter and chips into the cream quickly with the spatula. As it begins to combine and harden, sift the matcha powder into the pan. Continue to mix all ingredients together until thick and smooth and green tea powder is evenly combined. Pour fudge mixture into 8" pan lined with wax paper. Pour and spread fudge to be about 1" thick all around. The fudge does not have to be touching all sides of pan, as long as it has an edge butted up against the wax paper. Refer to my pic above for example. Sprinkle candy cane pieces evenly across top of fudge. Refrigerate for a few hours until fudge is firm and set. Remove fudge from pan and cut into four quadrants. Pull fudge pieces from paper and begin cutting triangle shapes. Use cutting guideline below to help cut trees. Refer to guide: Begin with thicker dotted lines and continue to cut all dotted lines shown in guide.

Note: Guideline below cuts about 24 trees, but you may have extra scraps that can be formed into additional trees. I had extra scraps from the beginning, when I cut my solid piece of fudge into an even square before I cut triangles out.

Last step is to push cut popsicle sticks into center bottom of each tree and add coconut to tops of trees. The shortest side of triangle will be your bottom of tree. Push coconut into all sides of top of trees. The fudge will be firm so you will need to push the coconut inward firmly in order to make the coconut stick onto fudge. If trees look sparse with candy cane coating, add some additional at end to make the trees look more cheery. If not all triangles are perfect, even better, they will all be unique. Big, crooked, or small, they will all taste great.