Thanksgiving recipes: leaving room for dessert

Thursday morning, children will be gathered around their televisions watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade while parents will be in the kitchen slaving over hot stoves preparing meals for the day. Here are four, simple-ingredient “Gobble goodies” that are easy to make, satisfying to one’s sweet tooth, and will help make Thanksgiving a little less stressful.

Wing-It Sugar Cookies

• One pack of pre-made sugar cookies
• One bag of candy corn
• Reeses’ peanut butter cups
• Vanilla icing along with yellow, red, and black food coloring

After removing cookies from the oven, let them cool, then proceed to stick the Reeses’ peanut butter cup in the middle of the cookie using icing. Create the three different colors of icing by adding drops of food coloring.Next, squeeze yellow icing around the peanut butter cup, then stick candy corn above the icing to form the “feathers.” Lastly, using a toothpick, add black eyes on the peanut butter cup and a red beak.

Apple Cinnamon Muffins

• 1 and 1/2 cups of flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1/2 cup of milk
• 1/3 cup of melted butter
• 1 egg
• 1 medium apple, chopped up into thin slices

To begin, coat a muffin pan with cooking spray then heat oven to 375 degrees. Get out a bowl and put the flour, sugar, egg yoke, baking powder, and cinnamon in it, then add the rest of the ingredients. Mix the ingredients until the flour is moist. After adding liners, pour the batter into the muffin pan. Cook for 18-20 minutes. After the time is completed, let the muffins sit out for 5 minutes. For an extra festive effect, remove the muffins from the pan and place them on a fall platter.

Grandma’s Angel Salad

• 2 small packages of lime Jell-O
• 16 marshmallows cut into four pieces
• 4 cups of boiling water
• 4 three ounce packages of cream cheese
• 1 cup of mayonnaise
• 1 large can of crushed pineapples, drained
• 1 cup of chopped pecans (optional)

Mix Jell-O with the boiling water. Add marshmallows and stir until they melt, then refrigerate for one hour. Mix together cream cheese and mayonnaise until smooth. Add pecans and pineapples to the cream cheese mixture. Remove the Jell-O and pour it into the other mixture; stir well. Refrigerate the dessert for two hours and transfer it to a glass dish for serving.

Celebratory Cherry Crumble

• 4 cups of cherries
• 1 or 2 tablespoons of sugar
• 3 tablespoons of softened butter
• three 1 and 1/2 ounce packages of instant maple and brown sugar flavored oatmeal

Put cherries and sugar in an ungreased pie pan and set out. Add butter into the oatmeal until crumbs are formed. Sprinkle the oatmeal over the cherries and bake in the oven at 375 degrees for 30-35 minutes. Remove when the top becomes golden. If cherries are not pleasing, this recipe also works with blueberries and blackberries.

After all, what is a holiday without dessert?