2012 Christmas Tins

As I’ve been trying to rebuild my blog from 2011-2015, most of the times I will rewrite all or at least parts of the post. However, I found a copy of this old post in my computer tonight, and it brought back such nice memories for me, so I decided to keep it exactly as it was written in 2012. I had posted the original post on Dec 23, 2012, but this year I thought it would be a great post to kick off the Christmas baking season, so I am posting this on Nov 23, 2019.

This was such a fun candy making year for me! I hope Kayla had as much fun as I did making candy this particular year.

From 2012:

This week has been a crazy furry of candy and cookie making! I spent the week with Kayla at the sorority house to make our annual Christmas tins this year. We decided to bake there since their kitchen is huge, and most of the girls had already gone home for the holiday. It was so much fun being able to cook in such a large kitchen!- it was great to have SO much counter space!- and 2 ovens- and 3 refrigerators! Awesome! Unfortunately, though, between school, work and home obligations, I didn’t have time this year to organize and plan as much as I usually do. I usually like to make lists of exactly what we will make (and in what order), shop efficiently to get the best deals, and double-check sure that I am prepared…this year, it was more of a “fly by the seat of your pants” type of week. For me, that usually means that I end up running to the store multiple times a day because I forgot something for the next recipe…or we make too much of something because I don’t take time to think it through logically. Yeah- that double batch of Cherry Mash and fudge was a great idea! (NOT!- LOL) I have never seen so many mini-cupcake liners of fudge in my life! – But in our defense, Kayla and I both swear that the last time we made fudge, we only got 35 pieces of fudge from a batch… not 85! We did want 70 pieces of fudge, but we certainly didn’t want 170!! The double batch of cherry mash- well- I have no explanation for what we were thinking with THAT one… except maybe that I had bought an extra bag of cherry chips, and too big of a can of peanuts (lack of planning strikes again)…so we thought “Hey- let’s just make a double batch since we have enough stuff!” – Good grief- another overload! Needless to say, I also ended up making a 10 pm run to Michaels to buy another 20+ tins to put all the extra candy in! – that would have been okay if I was at home, but Kayla’s school is in a small mountain town that doesn’t have a Michaels…so it was a fair drive into the city…in the wake of a snowstorm. But now that our mistakes are documented, I’m hoping it will remind us so we won’t repeat them

One good thing about our candy overload, and my 10 pm Michaels run… we did come up with a new idea for next year’s tins. We usually buy a lot of fairly small tins (not the smallest they make, but rather small). These work nicely to fit 2 each of the candies that we make (about 18-20 candies in a box). And for a couple of friends with large families, we buy larger tins so that we can put 4 of each type of candy in. When I went back out to buy extra tins, all that was left was the large or cute little tiny ones… so I decided to try the tiny ones. They were so perfect!-they actually fit 4-5 candies in 2 layers (8-10 candies fit in each tin). So Kayla came up with our new system: good friend tins, friend tins, and acquaintance tins. I love it!

This also gives us a way to give more candy boxes out. There are times that it is nice to give people tins, but we don’t know them well enough to give them larger ones. I was able to get the tiny tins for 50 cents apiece (on sale), so it would be a very affordable way to give Christmas tins to acquaintances who we normally wouldn’t give candy boxes to.

I just love how well the candies fit into these tins…

Acquaintance Tin:

First, I line the tin with a piece of plastic wrap.

Bottom Layer (Cherry Mash and Fudge):

Divider (We cut decorative parchment paper into circles to divide the candy layers):

Top layer (Peanut Butter Ball, Ranger Ball, Cookie Dough Truffle, Chocolate Peppermint Cake Ball, White Peppermint Cake Ball, and Chocolate Dipped Pretzels:

Friend Tin:
Bottom Layer (Chocolate Covered Cherries, Cherry Mash, Ranger Balls, Peanut Butter Balls, and Cookie Dough Truffles):

Divider (We cut decorative parchment paper into circles to divide the candy layers):

Top Layer (Chocolate Truffles, White Peppermint Cake Balls, Chocolate Peppermint Cake Balls, Fudge, and Chocolate Dipped Pretzels):

Good Friend Tins:

I didn’t take pictures of each layer on this tin, but the bigger tins can actually have 3 layers of candy. On the top layer of this tin, I just filled it with Chocolate Dipped Pretzels. There are 2 layers of candy underneath, each layer divided with decorative parchment paper circles.

We also baked mini cookies (Gingersnaps, Chocolate Chip Cookies (not pictured), Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Speckulatus Sugar Cookies), and we put them in clear 3X4 or 4X6 plastic bags. Then we placed the cookie bags inside of larger decorative bags and tied them with curling ribbon.