Christmas Baking

1. Oreshki (Filled Nuts):  The original recipe is here.  I used this electric gadget.  Here are my changes:  (1) Instead of margarine, I used butter.  Yes, more calories but the difference in taste is -- Wow!  (2) Iinstead of vanilla essence, I used almond bakery emulsion.  These little balls are so fragrant and yummy!  (3) The filling calls for three sticks of butter and I only used two -- it's plenty.  (4) When shells are baked, there are leftover crumbs.  I mixed in crumbs into the filling.  It made it thicker.  I made goodie bags for S. to take to his coworkers.  They were begging for more! :)
2. Zefir (Homemade Marshmallows -- if you don't like marshmallows, do give this recipe a try; these marshmallows are nothing are like sugar puffs sold in stores; they are creamy, yummy, and fragrant).  The original recipe is here.  It's a great recipe to make along with Oreshki since there are leftover egg whites!  I doubled this recipe because I had lots of egg whites -- do NOT do that, too much white fluffy stuff to deal with!!!  One batch is plenty anyway.  I used mango flavor but raspberry flavor Jell-O will make these fluffy balls so pretty, like Lea's picture.
3. Banana Raisin Bread:  I "cheated" with this one...  We wanted to give little gifts to our neighbors but buying a tin of cookies is not the same...  Something homemade is much better...  So I bought banana bread mix and added some raisins.  We delivered bread last night and our neighbors were very grateful.  Maybe next year I will have time to make more things from scratch...
4. Apple Spice Cake:  The recipe is here.  I still have to make several for our immediate families.  Dollar Tree had reusable cake carriers so I bought six, for easy packaging.  S. is in charge of wrapping ribbons around each carrier! :)