baking – Page 2 – Pollywog's Place Blog

Delicious Homemade Treats to Gift This Holiday

Published on December 17, 2024December 10, 2025 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog1 Comment

Do you have a limited budget? Or maybe you want to give gifts, but you aren’t sure what to give?

We love gifting foods for Christmas as everyone loves food… some are special treats that we only make this time of year so that makes them extra nice to give. We made several treats for our 2024 Polar Express Party and many of them were made as gifts to take home and enjoy… they are always a HIT!

Here are some of our favorite gifts to give (and receive):

Fudge – so many varieties
Chocolate candies – flavors for everyone!
Chocolate-dipped pretzel sticks
Christmas Breads
Homemade cookies (some of these recipes could be adapted to a ‘gift in a jar’ type recipe.)
Hot cocoa mix (you can find several cute ways to gift it on Pinterest)
Sourdough Bread
Sourdough Boules (the varieties are endless but our recipe has some of our favorite variations)
Sourdough Stars and Knots (you can use any type of filling you desire… we love using Nutella, Rosella jam, or Chocolate)
Sourdough cinnamon rolls… so good!
Smoky Walnuts

Continue reading →

Special Holiday Meals: Polar Express 2023, Sourdough Gifts & Recipes, and Other Life Updates

Published on December 19, 2023September 23, 2025 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog1 Comment

Well, our Polar Express Party was full of family, fun, food, and lots of love. I think everyone had a great time and it all seemed to have gone well despite the bad weather we were experiencing.

The cousins had a lot of fun visiting, playing hide and seek, enjoying all the sweet treats, and having a special movie night experience. The grown-ups also got to talk and enjoy the movie… I love these special memories that our kids will be able to fondly look back on when they are older.

Continue reading →

Amish Friendship Bread – A gift that keeps on giving!

Published on December 12, 2023December 12, 2023 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog2 Comments

Are you still trying to come up with a gift idea for someone? This is a great gift to give… either finish the starter out to bake the bread or gift some starter and a copy of the directions to your friends so they can bake their own bread.

I was recently gifted several starters so I had to dig through my old binders to find my old recipes for this gift. It’s been over 10 years since I’ve made any of these recipes. I ended up making 2 loaves of the Basic Recipe, 2 loaves of Banana Bread, 2 loaves of Chocolate Bread, and a double-batch of pancakes, and I still have 2 cups of starter left over to start another batch.

I have included the basic bread instructions in this post and I will also try to include a pretty printable for gifting. This would be so cute to give a small loaf of bread with a small jar of starter and the instructions.

There are many other variations available and you can easily search for more flavor variations online. I will try to update the blog with some of the other recipe variations that I have in my binder.

Continue reading →

Easy DIY Onion Soup Mix and Au Jus Mix

Published on December 10, 2023December 12, 2023 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog9 Comments

Don’t run out of these mixes again! These are so easy to make and they taste so much better than the store-bought… your family won’t know what you did differently but they’ll love it!

DIY Onion Soup Mix

Ingredients:

1 1/2 c. dry minced onion
2/3 c. beef bouillon powder (optional)
3 T. onion powder
1 T. dried parsley
2 t. oregano
2 t. garlic powder
1 t. celery seeds
1 t. black pepper
¼ t. paprika

Directions:

Continue reading →

Santa’s Top 10 Favorite Cookies That Can Be Made Ahead of Time!

Published on December 5, 2019December 11, 2023 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog3 Comments

I don’t know if Santa will be visiting your house anytime soon but I think he just might stop here for a handful of cookies. My kiddos love the tradition of leaving cookies for Santa although I suspect that it may be because they get to help sample the cookies.

This year I was determined to have a little bit less stress around the holidays but sometimes life seems to just happen around you. Our new house has been one thing after another and I really wasn’t sure just what else might happen before Christmas so I really tried to get things prepped ahead of time.

One thing I did was to make a TON of freezer meals, 35+ Freezer Meals In One Day!, and I also worked on adding printable recipes to all of my existing recipes on the blog as well as to the new recipes I’ve been posting. I’ve also gotten all of my recipes from my recipe box scheduled to post and I will continue to work on some of the others I have scattered around and packed up just as soon as I can.

This is so much easier than trying to keep your screen open in the kitchen… I apologize that I didn’t do this earlier! I also went ahead and made a bunch of Freezer Cookies! (Working on that post too!)

I’m not completely against using store-bought cookie dough but I feel that homemade is ALWAYS better if you can. With these recipes, you CAN! I normally like to roll most of my cookie dough into small balls and flash freeze to make it easier to only pull out what I need. You may want to experiment with these recipes or divide them into smaller batches before freezing. Check out this article HERE for more information about freezing different kinds of cookie dough!

Continue reading “Santa’s Top 10 Favorite Cookies That Can Be Made Ahead of Time!” →