Good Times Baking Holiday Sweets!

While in Boise with the fam, my sister decided that I could learn a few tricks of the baking trade from her so that when I got my Kitchenaid Mixer for Christmas, I'd be an old pro at the making of the baked goods!

So a few days before Christmas, we set to work...there was flour, sugar and butter galore, with some chopped nuts, mashed bananas, nutella, cream cheese, and red food coloring thrown in for fun effects.  The results were some of the most delicious concoctions that I've ever had the pleasure of saying that I helped create!  First on the list of baked delicacies were a couple batches of my sister's famous Nut Roll...

...we made six rolls in all (each batch produces 3 loaves) and I'm proud to say that I made pretty much the entire second batch by myself, though my sister did aid with the nut filling and my father was a whiz with the rolling pin!

The next order of business was finding a use for a couple uber-ripe bananas that my mother had been holding onto for who knows what reason.  I was thinking just regular old banana bread, but that's because, unlike my sister, I'm not a member of Pinterest yet.  She went looking through her pinned recipes and came up with Nutella Banana Bread...

...which I have to say is much more decadent than plain ol' banana bread.

Our third baking endeavor involved combining cream cheese, chocolate and red food coloring into another glorious Pinterest find, the Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies...

...which I might add that my sister and I managed to polish off in the matter of only a couple days, they are THAT good!

The next day, the baking goodness continued when my father got his bake on and made my absolute, all-time favorite Greek cookies in the entire world...Koulourakia!

These buttery little rings of awesomeness are by far the best cookies on earth, and no one can make them better than my dad...which is why my sister and I did not help with the baking process...I did partake fully in the eating process however!  I'm pretty sure I almost single-handedly polished off the entire batch he made, and there is a sad spot in my heart now that they are gone and that another batch will probably not be made until next Christmas...definitely an argument for keeping Christmas alive in your hearts (and kitchens) all year long in my opinion!

Now, I don't know any of the recipes by heart, but if you like what you see and would like one of the recipes, leave me a comment and I'll see if I can get the recipes from my sister.  Like I said before, the banana bread and brownie recipes are somewhere on Pinterest, but the Nut Roll is a family recipe, so I would definitely have to get her approval before giving it out.  I may not be able to pry the koulourakia recipe away from my father though, sorry, grandfather's recipe.

What wonderful goodies does your family make for the holidays?