Walmart Holiday Baking Challenge

Walmart challenged me to make 4 holiday treats that would for $20 or less! I love baking this time of year and I love giving home-made yummies to friends, the letter carrier, teachers, my husband's co-workers.Baking for others just puts me in the holiday spirit and is a tradition I love to pass on to my daughters. So here is how I did it, hope you enjoy some of these recipes and use coupons, and price matching to get some high quality ingredients at Walmart for LESS!



RECIPE # 1 Mini Christmas Butter Cookies

Ingredients for the Cookies:
1 cup softened butter (no substitutes)
1/3 cup whipping cream
2 cups All-Purpose Flour
(1/2 cup sugar or as much as you need put on a plate)

Ingredients for the Icing:
1/2 cup softened butter
1 1/4 cup powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla

DIRECTIONS:

Mix Together butter, cream and flour, and chill for 2-3 hours. Pre-heat over to 375. Take out 1/3 of the dough at a time and allow it to soften slightly to make it easier to work with. Roll out a potion of the dough to 1/8 thickness onto a floured surface. Cut into shapes using small cookie cutters. Prick cookies with a fork 3-4 times. Dip both sides into sugar (colored sugar can be sued as well). Place cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet and cook 7-9 minutes. DO NOT ALLOW COOKIES TO BROWN. Place cookies to a cooling rack.

ICING: Mix all the ingredients together. Add food coloring to icing if desired. Spread the icing on half of the cookie and place the un-iced cookie on top! ENJOY!!















This is what the finished cookies look like! They completely melt in your mouth so delicious!! I had about 50 of these cookies!!!

PRICE BREAK DOWN: Note I do spend more than $5.00 but I use these ingredients in other recipes which then takes me below $5.00 on that recipe!

Land O Lakes Butter $2.50 Price Matched with Target ad Coupon, Save, $.50 Final price, $2.00
Sugar: $1.58
Flour: $1.58
Powdered Sugar: $1.38
Whipping Cream $1.68
McCormick Vanilla Extract $2.50 Coupon, Save, $.75 Final Price, $1.75
Total Cost: $9.97 (with tons of left over ingredients for the other recipes!

















RECIPE # 2 PUPPY CHOW (aka Chex Muddy Buddies)
My mom always makes this and I have fond memories of shaking the bag with powdered sugar. This is a simple and fast and inexpensive yummy treat to make. Click here to get the recipe which is also found on all the boxes of Chex cereal! For added fun we bought a NEW dog bowl which I put in the dish washer before using and serve it out of that bowl!! This makes a huge container!

Price break down:(items that I already accounted for in previous recipes are not included)
Chex Cereal $2.00 used a $1.00 Kroger Catalina Final Price, $1.00
Peter Pan Peanut Butter: $2.00, coupon, Save, $.50 Final Price, $1.50
TOTAL COST: $2.50
















Recipe # 3 Peppermint Bark

This had to be the girls favorite recipe to help make! They were not able to crush the peppermint by just using their fists so they used things they found from their kitchen! ;0) I had 24 pieces!

Click here to see the recipe and you don't have to use the extract!

PRICE BREAK DOWN:
Nestle Chocolate Chips Price Match with Schnucks ad $1.00
Nestle White Chocolate Chips Price Match with Shnucks ad $1.00
Use this coupon $1.00/2
Final cost: Both for $1.00
Box of 12 Candy Canes $.88
TOTAL COST: $1.88

Recipe #4 Chocolate Chip Biscotti
Click here to see the recipe. This is seriously the yummiest thing I have made in a long time! Very easy to make, you use a COOKIE MIX!!! It called for drizzling semi-sweet chocolate but I felt like white chocolate ;0) This recipe makes a TON! I ended up with 36 pieces!
PRICE BREAK DOWN
Betty Crocker Cookie Mix $1.58 Coupon, Save, $.40 Final Cost, $1.18
Fisher Hazelnuts $1.33
Craisins $2.50

TOTAL COST, $5.01

So for all 4 recipes my grand total was $19.36!!! Each recipe truly turned out to be around $5.00 each when you divide up the ingredients and we had a blast making each of the goodies! I found the tins you see at Walmart for only $1.00 and of course you can always wait till after Christmas when they are marked down and save them to use for next year!!
So while this was 4 recipes, truly you could mix match these items and make up to 10 gift bags of goodies!
Enjoy and Happy Cost Efficient Baking ;0)

Thanks to Walmart for providing me with a $20 gift card to do this baking challenge!


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