Holidays: Tree trimming party

I love getting our home ready for Christmas.  My husband and I have a constant battle over white v. colored lights, and I’m always trying to figure out some way to make things fresh - and easy.  Last year we invited a bunch of friends over on the Saturday after Thanksgiving to help us clean up the leftovers.  This year I decided to take things one step further - I used the leftovers as a bribe to get our local friends to help us trim our tree.  Our friends, most of whom did not play host and thus didn’t have leftovers to enjoy, came over to enjoy our leftovers.  While my husband heated up the last few items before dinner and as he cleaned up after dinner, a bunch of my friends helped me trim our tree.

The keys to a good tree trimming party (and a bonus recipe for apple cake):

1. Good friends.
2. A Christmas tree - I had the lights and garland already up.
3. Ornaments ready for hanging
4. Food - ideally something that gets people in the holiday spirit.  I think our Thanksgiving leftovers were the perfect fit.
5. Drink - alcoholic or non, depending on your group.  Our group is on a wine kick right now, so we had a little wine tour - a bottle of Boujolais Nouveau from France, a bottle of Man Pinotage from Australia, and a bottle of Protocolo red from Spain.  All of it was nice, and none of it was expensive.
6. Christmas music.  We had our iPod going with our Christmas music collection, but most of the mid-sized cities and larger will have access to a radio station that plays Christmas music all the time at this point.

Bonus: Here’s a recipe for a delicious apple cinnamon cake I got from a co-worker’s wife:

Cake Ingredients

• 1.5 cups sugar
• .5 cup unsaled butter (softened)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 6 oz. cream cheese
• 2 eggs (room temp)
• 1.5 cups flour
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• .25 tsp salt

Topping Ingredients

• .25 cup sugar
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 3 cups peeled and chopped apples (Rome, Macintosh, or Cortland)

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350.
• Beat butter, cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla until well blended (~3 mins).
• Add eggs one at a time.
• Combine flour, baking powder, and salt.  Add to butter mixture on low.
• Combine topping sugar and cinnamon; then mix with apples.
• Stir apples into cake batter by hand.  Pour into greased 8″ springform pan and sprinkle with sugar.
• Bake 55-60 minutes or until cake pulls away from the sides of the pan.

Enjoy the season!