Sugar Plums

MERRY CHRISTMAS! To get in the spirit, I made sugar plums for today and tomorrow! Now I have always heard of sugar plums...as in "sugar plum fairies danced in my head", but I never gave them a second thought as to what they were. The other day I was watching 'The Chew'. I had never seen this show before, but it had 2 things that made me not change the channel. 1) Clinton Kelly from 'What Not to Wear' (love that show!) and 2) Carla Hall from Season 5 of Top Chef (loooove that show!) And the fact that Carla was oddly dressed as a ballerina definitely gave it some "huh??" factor to make me stick around and find out why she was clad in tutu and leotard.

On this show, it turns out Carla was dressed as a sugar plum fairy and was making....you guessed it! Sugar plums! They turn out to be basically dried fruit delights! She used dried figs in her recipe, but since the mere idea of figs grosses me out, I used raisins in my mix. It seemed easy enough so I thought I'd give it a go!

You'll need:
2 cup almond, 2 teaspoon orange zest, 2 teaspoon lemon zest, 1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 cup dried apricots (finely chopped), 1 cup raisins (finely chopped), 1/4 - 1/2 cup honey, powder sugar (for dusting)

1.) Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Put almonds on baking sheet and toast in oven for 10 minutes. Once they are cooled, finely chop them.

 2) Combine honey, both zests, and cinnamon in a mixing bowl. Add chopped nuts, apricots and raisins.

 Stir until everything is well mixed. (I started out with 1/4 cup honey, and I added a little more until the mix was able to be molded into a ball)

 3. Start making balls out of the mixture (about teaspoon size). Then roll each ball in powdered sugar and then place in an airtight container lined with wax paper. You can serve immediately or store in the fridge until needed.

These reminded me of a sweet energy snack. Yummy, & very sweet! Definitely one for the sweet-tooth!