Oh Christmas Tea! and turtles....

This Saturday the church that I attend is having our annual Christmas Tea. This is a day of just girl time, where you can host a table of 8, decorate your table until you are just sick about it, and the best part is..the men serve you!! Let me just tell you, this only happens once a year for me, and I take full advantage of my girly day. Every year we have a theme, and this years theme is "Christmas around the world" all the money raised for the tea will go to the Haiti missionary trip that my husband will be part of in a couple of weeks. Within the tea, we are having "the Market in Bethlehem" with a bake sale, and other goodies. All of this money will go to the children of Haiti that are in orphanages. It is such an exciting day, I will have pics after Saturday to show of all of the other table decorations. So, where does this "Santa Turtle" come in? It is for the bake sale, of course.



My turtle is a mold, filled with a shell of tempered chocolate, filled with caramel and pecans and topped with another layer of chocolate to seal in the inside "guts." Then with white chocolate with a little bit of red food coloring and a little of just white chocolate makes the little hats that make my turtles little "santa's."



To make the caramel, I used a can of sweetened condensed milk, removed the label, put it in a pot of water--make sure the can is completely covered with water at all times--and boil for 3 hours. Let it cool completely, open the can and you have great caramel!! Use 3 cans of this and you can make a caramel pie that is just like O'Charley's. Yum!!




Next, I have Coconut Joys. These are so simple to make!

Coconut Joys:

1 stick of butter

2 Cups of powdered sugar

3 Cups of sweetened coconut

1/2 cup chocolate chips

Melt butter in a medium sized saucepan, remove from heat. Add the powdered sugar and coconut and mix until it is all combined well. Roll into balls and let set to "dry" for a few minutes. Melt the chocolate chips and drizzle over the tops of the coconut balls.

Stay tuned for more bake sale items.....