Santa Hat Brownies & a Candy Cane Wreath

mmmmmm....I was SO excited to make these when I pinned them to my "Yum in my Tum...Treats" board on Pinterest. When I received a calendar invite for a 'cookie exchange' at work, I knew these would be easy and perfect! Though they aren't 'cookies' - they're in the super YUM category and are very festive.

The above link goes to a recipe that calls for mascarpone buttercream frosting - but I didn't have that... so I just used plain ol vanilla frosting, put it in a plastic zip bag & 'piped' it out on top of the brownie and strawberry. Of course mine aren't AS pretty as the original source, but they were damn good!!

I used a box of brownie mix, baked it, let it cool then used a small round cookie cutter to make the perfect size/shape for the base of the 'Santa Hats'.

I set them down on a big table amongst all the other treats...

I thought it was funny that as people came & observed...many automatically knew those were from me. It's not like a bake all the time for work, so not sure why that was the auto-assumption. But maybe it was the few times I've brought in cake pops that gave them reason to tie me to these scrumptious little treats!

Anyway - thank you "Daisy" for posting a great little recipe for me to be inspired by!!

And here's my newly assembled Candy Cane wreath...I just love it. I used 22 candy canes (just about 2 boxes...that are only a BUCK each), some thin red ribbon, hot glue gun, 2 doilies, some round felt (behind the doilies for extra reinforcement), and some black letter stickers.

I wanted to put "Merry Xmas"...but it didn't fit right. Then I tried 'joy' but it was too small with the size stickers I had...finally I decided on 'ho ho ho', which cracks me up! But it looks cute. It's very fragile however, so not sure if it'll last til next Christmas - without getting broken. But this literally cost me under $3 to make - so I'm not too worried about it!