12 days of Christmas: must-have Christmas recipes

Christmas fantasy fudge: I’m not sure why people don’t talk about fudge more, so I’m talking about it. Fudge tastes like Christmas feels. Don’t give me the “oh, but it’s so rich I can only have one piece,” spill because I could eat an entire pan of fudge without batting an eye (especially if it’s my mom’s fudge). 

Ingredients:

3 cups of sugar

¾ butter

⅔ cup evaporated milk

12 oz semisweet chocolate chips (1 bag)

7 oz jar of marshmallow creme 

1 tsp vanilla

Instructions: 

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Once melted, add the sugar and evaporated milk and stir until the sugar dissolves. Bring it to a boil for 6-7 minutes (you want the mixture to heat up to 234 degrees). Stir it occasionally to prevent burning. 

Remove the pan from the heat and add in the chocolate chips. Stir the mixture together until the chocolate chips are completely melted. Once the chocolate is melted, mix in the marshmallow creme and vanilla. 

Grease a 9×13 pan and pour the fudgy goodness into the pan. Let it cool before cutting the fudge into pieces. If you’re impatient like me, pop the pan into the fridge to speed up the cooling process. 

Gluten-free Christmas sugar cookies: The Christmas season is baking season and there’s nothing better than frosting sugar cookies for Santa with your family on Christmas Eve. I’ve recently become a gluten-free hooligan, which has made the holiday season much trickier for my family and me. This sugar cookie recipe is excellent and works with the cheapest gluten-free flour! (All credit goes to Melissa Erdelac).

Ingredients:

1 egg

2 cups gluten-free flour

¼ tsp salt

1 cup of sugar

2 tsp vanilla

½ cup butter (or butter-flavored shortening for my dairy-free people!)

1 tsp milk (or almond/oat milk)

Instructions: 

Start the process off by beating your butter and sugar together until they’re well combined. This should create a tasty and sticky cloud of goodness; using room temperature butter yields the best results. Once you have the cloud prepared, add the egg, milk, vanilla and salt into the mixture and stir. The mixture should be smooth, but it takes a minute of stirring to attain the desired consistency. Patience is key. 

Fold in your gluten-free flour one cup at a time until the dough is just mixed. Over mixing gluten-free flour can result in a hard dough and a tough cookie. Refrigerate the dough for one hour (the warmer the dough is, the more it’ll spread during the baking process). If you don’t want to go through the messy process of flouring your countertop and rolling out cookie dough, you can simply roll the dough into balls and bake them like that. *Pro-tip* I use a mixture of flour and powdered sugar to roll out my sugar cookies in the middle with your thumb or a spoon to encourage spread. 

That being said, if you are down to clean up flour for the rest of your life, go ahead and dust your counter with flour. *Pro-tip* I use a mixture of flour and powdered sugar to roll out my sugar cookies, it makes them better. 

Be sure to only roll out half of the dough at a time. Use your favorite Christmas cookie cutters and use a spatula to bring your shaped cookie dough from the counter to the cookie sheet. 

Bake the cookies at 350 degrees for 10 minutes and cool them for 5 minutes. 

Emily White is a junior studying English and broadcast journalism. She is currently serving as the senior writer for the Lifestyles section of the Statesman.

—emily.white@usu.edu