Christmas Traditions!

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Mae

Well here we are the day after Christmas… It feels like last week has been a blur! That is partially because Peanut had surgery last Monday to have tubes put in. She has battled 4 sets of double ear infections since October! The first two nights of the week were sleepless. She was in a lot of pain (not from the tubes but from have 2 terrible infections going on!), and was up nearly every hour. I haven’t slept that poor since Munchkin was a baby!

Needless to say, this week came an went even faster than it would normally!

We were still able to do a few of our favorite Christmas traditions. We made a gingerbread house, baked and ‘painted’ sugar cookies, made a few more types of cookies, went to Church on Christmas Eve, went for a drive around our town to see lights, and listened to carols!

Here are two of my favorite cookie recipes!

Secret Kiss Cookies

Ingredients:

1 Cup Butter 1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup sugar 1 cup ground pecans

2 cups flour 1 1lb bag of Hershey Kisses

Powdered Sugar

Directions:

Beat butter, sugar and vanilla. Add flour and nuts.

Chill dough for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven @ 350.

Wrap each kiss in dough (a little goes a long way!) Making little balls. Bake for 6-8 minutes. You can place many cookies on the tray I leave about an inch apart. They do not spread when baking.

Cool and then coat in powdered sugar. Be very gentle these are delicate!

Chocolate Mint Cookies

Ingredients:

3/4 Cup Butter 2 1/2 cups flour

1 1/2 Cups brown sugar 1 1/4 tsp baking soda

2 tablespoons water 1/2 tsp salt

2 cups of semi-sweet choc chips 2 (4.5 ounce) packages of Andes Mints

2 eggs

Directions:

In a sauce pan over medium heat, cook sugar, butter, and water, stirring occasionally until melted. Remove from heat, stir in chocolate chips until melted set aside to cool for 10 minutes.

Pour the chocolate mixture into a large bowl, and beat in the eggs, one at a time. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt, stir into chocolate mixture. Cover and refrigerate dough for at least 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease cookie sheets. Roll dough into walnut sized balls and place 2 inches apart onto the prepared cookie sheets.

Bake for 8-10 minutes in preheated oven, be careful not to over bake. When cookies come out of the oven, press one mint (sometimes a 1/2 is more than enough!) and swirl with a toothpicks. Let them set (or don’t!) before eating!

Store cookies in an airtight container!

Gobble Gobble…. Turkey Cookies!

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Mae

Munchkin is in preschool 3 days a week. Tomorrow they are having a Thanksgiving Party! I am sure it will be adorable seeing them all singing their turkey songs. I signed up to bring cookies.

I asked munchkin what kind of cookies did she want me to bring. First she said, “Pumpkins.” Then she changed her mind (isn’t that what 3-year-olds always do?!?) and said “TURKEYS!!”

So I ran to Pinterest.. and search ‘turkey cookies’ there were a couple of consistent pins. So we settled on this one.

Oreo Turkeys!

Now I am not going to lie… these were SUPER labor intensive! Mostly, lots of steps.

What you need per Turkey:

Candy Corn 5-7 (back feathers)
2 Double Stuffed Oreo Cookies (body)
1 Whopper (head)
1 Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup (side cut off)
1 Tube of blue piping gel (eyes)
1 tube of white icing (glue)
1 tube/can chocolate icing
red cookie icing
1 sharp knife

This step should make your life easier:

Put your Peanut Butter Cups in the fridge to get hard. If you have cold hard chocolate to work with it makes it a lot easier. OK, so the original recipe I followed did not have this suggestion. I wish it had!!!

Assembling the Bird:

First is the tail using 1 Oreo cookie and 5-6 Candy Corn. Now here is the fun part. Twist to remove the non-icing side. Put a nice blog of icing (white preferably) in the middle. Arrange 5-6 candy corn around one of the edges of the cookie half with the double stuffed icing. Put another small blog of icing on the half of the cookie w/out the icing. Make sure you leave the yellow/orange piece sticking out. Oh, and should an Oreo break during the twisting action it is important that you taste test to check for any potential quality issues.

Take your chocolate (or white) icing and squeeze a good-sized blog onto the top back edge of what will be the bottom Oreo cookie. Take the tail feather Oreo and put the bottom into the icing to have it stand up. If it doesn’t stand, add more icing or prop against a back splash! Once you have it stand put it up against something so it doesn’t fall until the icing is dry.

Remove your Peanut Butter Cups from the fridge. Place with the top of cup face down on your cutting surface. Take your knife and cut off the very bottom so you have a flat surface. Put icing on the cut side and along what would have been the top of the PB cup. Place it against the bottom and back of your Oreo cookies. You should be eating the cut edges so you don’t waste any. (Just saying!)

Next, take a Whopper and put a little blog of icing on it on one side. Place the whopper on top of the PB Cup to make the head.

To make the nose take a piece of candy corn and cut off the white part. Eat or discard the rest (who would discard it!) Now, if you are lucky you will have a bunch of white tips floating around your bag like I did!!

Take your icing and place two white dots as eyes. I put a spoonful in a ziplock baggie and cut a tiny bit off to get a small dot. Get your tube of blue piping gel and place a black dot on each eye.

I used red cookie icing to add a goobler. (Just so you are really informed it is called a Wattle and only on male turkeys – Thanks GOOGLE!)

If you want you can add feet by making some orange icing and piping it on. Or not… they are pretty cute without.

That is it… not too hard but mostly like I said a million steps. Tomorrow at her Thanksgiving party, I am going to watch 15 3-year-olds decapitate and dismember the turkeys I slaved over tonight! It will be worth it!!!!

Halloween Party 2011 Part 1

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Mae

I decided to break this into two parts… so be on the look out for the other part coming tomorrow.

We have a good group of parents that has formed a very loose ‘playgroup’. Mostly, we all just get together periodically and do things locally. Tomorrow is our Halloween Party! It is going to be a great today Munchkin and I made some treats to take.

I had found a ton of great ideas on Pinterest… and settled on two fun snacks!

The first we found here.

Witches Hats!

Here is what you need:

1 bag of Hershey’s Kisses (unwrapped)
2 packages of Keebler’s Fudge Stripes cookies
a tube of Wilton Orange Icing/Vanilla Icing with Orange food coloring*

* If you use the vanilla icing then a piping bag and a small tip come in handy

How to make them:

Turn the cookies upside down. Pipe a small circle of icing around the ring of the cookie. Push the Hershey’s Kiss onto the cookie. Then allow the icing to harden. Cover the cookies and keep airtight until serving.

Munchkin had a BLAST putting the Kisses on the hats we made for the party!

Not too shabby for our first attempt.

Witches Hats

Our second treat was another Pinterest find from here .

Halloween White Chocolate Bark

14 whole Halloween Oreos, broken up

1 1/2 cups pretzels – any shape, broken into pieces
16 ounces white bakers chocolate/ white chocolate melts
1 cup candy corn
brown and orange colored sprinkles (any Halloween mix will do!)Cover a large cookie sheet with wax paper or parchment paper. Spread broken cookies, pretzels and about 3/4 cup of the candy corn onto the prepared cookie sheet in a 9×13 shape.

This is yummy even before the chocolate!

Place almond bark in a container and microwave for 1 1/2 minutes. Stir and then microwave for another 30 seconds until melted and smooth.Drizzle the melted chocolate over the cookie mixture, spreading with spatula if needed to coat evenly. It may seem like it’s not enough but just try to evenly spread it.

White Chocolate Covered

The ratio of chocolate to toppings will be off if you add more almond bark/white chocolate. Sprinkle remaining candy corn and colored sprinkles over the almond bark/white chocolate while it is still wet.

Ready too harden!

Place cookie tray into refrigerator until set and firm. Remove and gently break bark into small pieces – it’s really rich. Makes around 20-24 pieces. Store in air tight container.

I’ll take a picture tomorrow of the final product! I will also post some of the crafts we end up doing too. Fall is such a fun time!

Enjoy!!!

Fall is in the Air with Caramel Stuffed Apple Cider Cookies!

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Mae

I made these a couple weeks ago and I think I am going to make them again next week or maybe this weekend!

Caramel Stuffed Apple Cider Cookies

adapted from Scrambled Henfruit

Ingredients

1 cup softened butter

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 box (7.4 oz) Alpine Spiced Apple Cider Instant Original Drink mix -not sugar free- all 10 packets (I found this in my grocery store near the hot chocolate mixes.)

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon of Apple Pie Spice

3 cups all purpose flour

1 bag Kraft Caramels (14 oz) (I used about 6-8 of the caramel bits-no unwrapping and still yummy)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350° F. Line cookie sheets with parchment. (You really need the parchment!)
In a small bowl whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon.
With your mixer (or an energetic spoon) cream together butter, sugar, salt and all 10 packages of apple cider drink mix powder, until light and fluffy.
Beat in eggs, one at a time. Add vanilla and mix well.
Gradually add flour mixture to butter/egg mixture. Mix until just combined.
Refrigerate for about an hour. (If you’re really impatient you don’t have to do this, but it makes it so much easier to work with.)
When you are ready to bake, unwrap your caramels.
Scoop out cookie dough ball about the size of a walnut. (I used a rounded cookie scoop-full. My scoop holds about a Tablespoon.)
Flatten the ball of dough slightly in the palm of your hand. Press the unwrapped caramel into the center of your dough and seal the dough around it, covering it completely. Place on parchment covered cookie sheets 2 inches apart.
Bake 12-14 minutes, or until very lightly browned around the edges. Please don’t over-bake! Once the cookies are done, slide the parchment off of the baking sheet right out onto the counter. Allow cookies to partially cool on the parchment. When cookies are cool enough to be firm but still slightly warm, carefully twist off of parchment and allow to finish cooling upside down (either on the parchment or on a rack.) If you forget about them and they cool too much and stick to your parchment, put them into the freezer for a few minutes and they’ll pop right off.
Yield: about 4 dozen, depending on how large you make your cookies (or how many caramels have been snitched out of your bag before you begin.) Store in an airtight container.

They are SOOO yummy out of the oven… she suggests letting them warm up over a cup of tea. We cheated and used the microwave!

ENJOY!!!