I haven’t posted this weekend because I was furiously preparing for our housewarming/holiday party. The party was last night, and it went off without a hitch. Good food, good people, and it even snowed a little. I now have the sniffles because of our impromptu snowball fight in the backyard.

I made 3 appetizers ahead of time and froze them. And I made homemade marshmallows shaped like snowflakes as favors for everyone (all recipes thanks to Martha Stewart). It was a great night!

Freezing the Ham and Gruyere Thumbprints. These were a big hit.

These Mini Chicken B’Steeyas were a huge hit. I was surprised, but the combination of sweet and savory was really popular. They took the longest to make, though.

The Mini Asian Crabcakes also went over really well. I fried them up a couple days before and followed the freezing directions.

I have to say, all three of these recipes reheated perfectly. I kept the oven at 425 and just heated them up for 10 minutes. We had sort of an open house with people dropping in all night, so I served them in batches to make sure I’d have enough to last the night.

Then the marshmallows. Once I figured out what I was doing, they were incredibly easy to make. I used the recipe in the special Holiday issue of Martha Stewart’s magazine, and it is different than the recipe on the website (which is better). Some of the directions were a little off. But the yield mentioned in the online recipe is definitely not 100 marshmallows. More like 20 or 30 with a 2″ cookie cutter. And it took a lot of hunting to find a small snowflake cookie cutter (if you want them to be small enough to fit in a mug of hot chocolate). They need a few hours to sit out and set, and cutting them with the cookie cutter needs a lot of patience, but they were so worth it!

The favors in little boxes for everyone.

**I made 20 boxes of marshmallows and put 3 in a box. So a pan does yield more than 20 or 30. I made two pans and got 60 marshmallows out of one and a half pans (so I have some for me, too).

***I used powdered sugar instead of corn starch.