Candy Cane Cookies

On a Facebook group I follow, a local woman shared her grandma's recipe for candy cane cookies. I decided to give a go at making them to give as Christmas gifts for the neighbors. They were fun to make, looked super cute, and tasted buttery and delicious. I couldn't get the peppermint candy pieces to stick, but I think the cookies looked better and tasted better without them anyway. The only other change I'd recommend is using less almond extract, as I thought it was a touch overpowering (my husband, on the other hand, liked the almond flavor).

The directions that are italicized are my additions.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup shortening

1/2 cup softened butter

1 cup powdered sugar

1 egg

1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract (I think 1/2 tsp would be enough)

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 teaspoons red food coloring (or as needed)

1/2 cup coarse sugar 

1/2 cup crushed peppermint candies (optional)

Directions:
1. Stir together the flour and salt. Set aside.

2. In a separate bowl, mix shortening, butter, powdered sugar, egg, and flavorings.
3. Stir half of flour mixture into shortening mixture. Work in remaining flour mixture with your hands until dough holds together.

4. Divide dough in half. Blend red coloring in half of dough.
5. Divide each half into four balls and refrigerate for 30 minutes while the oven preheats to 375.

6. Make two strips of two colors, side by side. Make like a rope.

My picture of my cookie dough rope:

7. Cut into pieces approximately 6 inches long.  Curve tops like love handles (Those are the grandmother's words, not mine!).

Here's my picture of the cut sections:

8. Bake nine minutes at 375 degrees.
9. While warm, remove from sheet and sprinkle with mixture of crushed candy and sugar (I preferred just the sugar without the crushed peppermint candies).

 10. Enjoy! Also, you will gain weight (Again, her grandmother's words and not mine! Ha!).

Once cool, I packaged them up in some plastic wrap, tied them with a ribbon, and attached a gift tag. All together, this made ~20 cookies for me, but some were very fragile and broke. Thankfully, I had some helpers who were willing to eat those broken ones ;-)

...and to all, a goodnight!

The kids got to open their present from Aunt Julie (in town from Omaha) on Christmas Eve. Matching jammies! Jack pot!

Before bed, we set out milk & cookies for Santa, and we also left a carrot for Rudolph.

Oliver decorated the cookies himself, and he signed his own name!

A Gingerbread Cityscape

Weeks ago, I found a cute Christmas idea in Better Homes & Gardens. It was a tutorial to make a gingerbread cityscape in a jar. I tore out the page to use later, and I asked Andrew for a glass jar for my birthday. When Aminta and I got together to bake Christmas cookies (as we do every year), we got to work on our cities.

We didn't end up following the tutorial. I used the gingerbread recipe from allrecipes.com that served me so well for our gingerbread house. Then, Aminta and I cut out the buildings freehand. We cut out houses, churches, skyscrapers, capitol buildings... even a Taj Mahal! We used a wooden skewer to carve in the details. After the cookies were baked and cooled slightly, we rubbed powdered sugar in the carvings. Once they were completely cool, I poured sugar into my jar and stuck the cookies in to create a cityscape. Ta da!

Heart-Shaped Treats for Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!

I love holidays. It's so much fun to hang up little decorations or plan special meals. I've always liked celebrating them, but it's gotten even more fun since having kids.

Yesterday, for dessert, I made tapioca pudding. I was washing strawberries to freeze for smoothies when I had an idea to cut them into hearts. Check out this cute pre-Valentine's Day dessert:

Today, we had friends from MOMS Club come over and help us decorate cookies. It was Oliver's first time having friends to the house, and he was excited to show them his mixer and mixing attachments. The kids were all younger than Oliver. One was mostly interested in feeling the sprinkles. Another had fun decorating, but he insisted on eating his cookies as soon as a bit of frosting got on them. After eating a number of cookies, his mom decided he'd better be done. Oliver decorated about six and then ate half of them. The rest of the 50 cookies were decorated by moms. Well, we had fun.

Hosting this cookie decorating day gave me a chance to compare various sugar cookies. Homemade cookies were vastly superior! Don't get me wrong, I love Pillsbury biscuits, crescent rolls, and refrigerated pie crusts. You can do so many creative things with those products. I've used their sugar cookie dough for fruit pizzas and was pleased. However, I discovered last night that their sugar cookies were terrible  for cut-out cookies. They expanded and puffed up and completely lost their shape. While cooling, they deflated. We were left with weird, oval-shaped, flat cookie blobs. I used the cookie cutter to try to re-cut them. It was better than before, but we were still left with flat cookies that looked icky and had rough edges. So, Oliver and I had to make an emergency batch of sugar cookies ourselves, and they turned out beautifully (you can find that Taste of Home recipe here). Bookmark that recipe! They made the best sugar cookies that tasted great and held their shape.

After cookie decorating fun, I got busy making a heart-shaped pizza!

...and then we finished the night off with a mini heart-shaped, red-velvet cheesecake (I halved this recipe from McCormick, and used a heart-shaped springform pan like this:

                                                                        

Oliver wanted to sing a song, so we sang, "Happy Valentine's Day to You," before diving into our cheesecake goodness.
I hope you had a wonderful Valentine's Day celebrating with your family, friends, or loved one.

Soft Brown Sugar Cookies

I stumbled upon a unique cookie recipe online that looked mouthwatering.  I pinned it to my Pinterest boards to make sure I wouldn't lose it.  Here's my pin:  http://pinterest.com/pin/216383957066504346/

The only ingredient that required a trip to the store for me was the sour cream.  The next day, I picked some up from the store and jumped into cookie baking.  Andrew came home in the midst of it and remarked that our house smelled like pancakes.  He was right.  These cookies smell just like pancakes as they bake!

I glazed them with the butter glaze when they came out.  Andrew swore they tasted just like pancakes, too.  I thought, if I ever make these again, I should add maple to the glaze to add to the effect.  They're already dubbed "the pancake cookies" in my house.

I loved how soft these cookies are.  They tasted sweet, but in a good way.  Still, I think when I crave a soft, fluffy cookie, I'll go to my old standby and make these lemon ricotta cookies:
http://pinterest.com/pin/216383957066527621/

Pinterest Challenge Day 19: Grain-Free Mudslide Fudge Cookies

I procrastinated today. At 5pm, which is getting late in our house, I asked my husband to "quick, find me a pin I can whip up tonight!" He chose these five-ingredient, grain-free, mudslide fudge cookies that I'd pinned because we had everything on hand:

http://pinterest.com/pin/216383957066214118/

I used raw honey and dark chocolate cocoa powder because that's what was in the house. They were so fast to make. From start to finish, they were done in 10 minutes. I pulled them out of the oven, and they looked beautifully dark:


Oooh, you can just tell how they taste by looking at them, can't you? Dark chocolate lovers, indulge! These came out tasting dark and oh-so-good. My husband commented that they tasted unlike anything he's ever had before and described them as "meringue meets cake."

This is the kind of recipe I'll keep on hand to quick whip up at night to fill a chocolate fix. Plus, they're not so bad for you, right?

Pinterest Challenge Day 1: Healthy Cookie Dough Dip

My friend, Sam, challenged her friends to complete one of their Pinterest pins for every day they have off of work in February. I'm a stay-at-home mom, so I decided to take her challenge a step farther. I'm going to complete one of my pins every single day in February.

Assuming you've never been on Pinterest, let me quick tell you what it's about. People can pin anything they're interested in. It's almost like "liking" something on Facebook, except your whole profile is made up of your pins. People pin recipes, crafts, DIY projects for the home, gardening, and other how-tos. If you're like the average pinner, you'll end up pinning faster than you can complete the tasks! That's where Sam's challenge came in.

Today, I completed this pin: http://pinterest.com/pin/216383957066129767/. It's actually a healthy recipe that is designed to mimic eating chocolate chip cookie dough, straight from the bowl! All that's in it are beans, peanut butter, dates, oats, and chocolate chips, plus some vanilla, salt, and baking soda. To get the full recipe, just click directly on the picture from the link.

To be honest, I actually tried this recipe once before, but I did the version that uses brown sugar instead of dates. I liked it, and it was very filling, but the taste of chickpeas was extremely song. Also, I like soy milk and almost never drink regular cow's milk, but I thought the taste of soy was a little off in the cookie dough. I used that past attempt to try to improve on this one.

I decided to use white kidney beans instead of chickpeas. So much better! Chickpeas have a pretty strong flavor, and the white kidney beans are much more mild. I also subbed a few splashes of cow's milk for the soy milk, which took away more of the over-powering nutty flavor. Success!

Here's what mine looked like:

I preferred my version of her no-sugar added cookie dough over the one with sugar. It's so delicious! It tastes (and feels) almost exactly like cookie dough!

My husband came downstairs before work and caught Oliver and me each eating a small bowl full. I told him we'd made cookie dough dip. He looked at Oliver and asked, "But should he be eating it for breakfast?"
I got to proudly tell my husband that it was actually healthy, and the only questionable breakfast item in it was chocolate chips. I handed him the ingredient list as proof. He then took a taste and was quite impressed. So, in spite of the healthy, odd mix of ingredients, we all enjoyed it. I'm going to keep this one pinned to my board to be able to come back to again and again.

Gingerbread Cookies

Would the holidays be complete without some gingerbread cookie decorating with the kids? I don't think so!

Oliver loves baking and using the mixer, but I could not fathom making dough, letting it refrigerate, rolling it out, and decorating a million cookies with a two year-old. So, I took the kids out to the grocery store for refrigerated dough. I had the choice between a giant package of Pillsbury or a smaller package of all-natural cookies by Immaculate Baking Company. They were the same price, but I didn't want to be overloaded with cookies anyway. I went with the natural cookie dough. As a bonus, it came with a packet of decorating sugar, which we sprinkled on the icing later.

I worried the cookies wouldn't work because they were pre-formed into drop cookies for easy baking. I just took the lot of them and mashed them together into a ball for rolling. It wasn't a problem at all! Here's my helper rolling out the dough. Take note that my other helper is snoozing in the chair behind him:

Then came the fun part: the cookie cutters! We picked these up from Hobby Lobby yesterday. Their Christmas stuff was on sale for 50% off, so we bought a package of two gingerbread men cutters for $2.

Oliver thought the cookie cutter part was OK. He does it a lot with Play-Doh, so it's kind of lost its luster. As I punched out most of the cookies, Oliver stole little tastes.

The cookies swelled a lot during baking, and their shapes were pretty unrecognizable. I've had that happen with rolled cookies before, but it might have happened with the refrigerated dough because they were made to be drop cookies. No matter! I went back over them with the cookie cutters. It worked like a charm!

Once the cookies were cool, Oliver and I got busy decorating. I took the shortcut again and bought pre-made icing in a decorating bag. It was a little pricey at $3, but, sometimes, it's worth it to pay for conveniences. This was one of those times!

Oliver paused to sample a cookie:

The bag was difficult for him to squeeze, so I squirted a small amount into a bowl for him to use to decorate.

Decorating with one hand and eating a cookie with another:

Back to the squeeze bag:

Oliver decided to sample the icing, too. No wonder this kid wouldn't nap again today! I'm pretty sure 80% of his diet today was sugar.

Our finished cookies:

I have to take a moment to rave about these cookies. Their flavor was out of this world. I could taste the molasses. They really, truly tasted homemade. I don't think we would have made a better finished product if we went through the effort of making them ourselves. I decided they were good enough for gifts! We made tags for four of them to give to each of Oliver's grandparents. I let Oliver color the tags. He's pretty good at that stuff.

The final product:

Parents of toddlers, if you have loads of patience and deal well with messes, I highly recommend taking a few hours for some cookie makin' and bakin'. We had loads of fun!

100 (Attempted) Ways to Entertain a Young Toddler, Day 38: Play-Doh Cookies

I admit it: Today's activity was just as much for me as it was for Oliver.

Oliver loves making cookies with me. Every day, he begs me to pull out the Kitchenaid to make cookies. We don't do it often (maybe once or twice a month), but it really is one of his favorite things to do. We've always made drop cookies and never any roll out cookies.

Today, I thought we'd practice to get Oliver on par for Christmas time.

This activity came from Andrew's mom. A few months ago, she bought some clay, a small rolling pin, and some plastic cookie cutters for Oliver to play with at her house. It sounded promising, but Oliver wasn't very interested in playing with the clay.

I have a few canisters of leftover Play-Doh from Halloween last year (we gave out miniature canisters to trick-or-treaters). After success with yesterday's creative activity, I decided try another creative activity today. I dug out the rolling pin and the leaf cookie cutters from his party last year. Then, I showed him how to roll out the "dough" and making "cookies" with the cutters. Success! Oliver played with me for a solid 10 minutes before declaring that he was done.

In my mind, Oliver's going to be ready for making sugar cookies at Christmas time. I am excited thinking about letting him help me roll some dough and use some cookie cutters. Fun, fun!

Like yesterday's activity, this one earns an A. It's creative and fun without being messy. Cleanup included wiping down the rolling pin, rinsing the cookie cutters, and putting the Play-Doh back in its container. For me, it was all simple, but it will take advanced prep for people who don't have the supplies on hand. If you don't have all the equipment at home, you can improvise. I'm sure you can use a cup turned upside down as a circle cookie cutter, and anything cylindrical can be used in place of a rolling pin. If you don't have Play-Doh or clay on hand, there are some recipes on the internet. I've never tried making my own, so I don't have one to recommend, but this link has three recipes listed. Use whichever one fits the ingredients you have on hand.