Twelve Days of Christmas

Day 7, Day 8 and Day 9

Cookies, candy, and packaging! Oh my. The last three days have been filled with finishing up the week at school and baking and candy making.  Here are some of the goodies waiting to packaged up in containers to take to our volunteers. 

From the bottom of the picture up there are chocolate crinkle cookies, salted carmel chews, traditional chocolate chip cookies, fool proof fudge, and Grandma Cowan's peanut brittle.  She made it every year that I can remember.  She didn't use a written down recipe, so one year I watched her and wrote down what she did.  Now I make it just about every year.  I panicked for a few minutes this year when I couldn't find my hand written note in my recipe files but a third time through I found it.  Mr. Darling says I should scan it into the computer "just in case" I really do lose it.  It's a good idea, we'll see if I remember to do that.

Well I'm off to finsh tags for the treat containers, only 3 more days. I can't believe it, it has come so quickly this year.

Have a great day and I'll talk to you again soon.

Cookies

I was craving a little something sweet and baked.  These chocolate chip cookies with crushed pecans hit the spot and they whipped up pretty quickly.  I used the traditional toll house recipe but food processed the nuts to a really fine chop almost to meal stage.  They were perfect!

Have a great day, I'll talk to you again soon.

Caught in the act!

I was experimenting tonight.  I wanted to make some cookies but didn't want to drag out all the ingredients and I didn't want to make a huge amount.  So on to the internet I went and found several recipes using a cake mix to make cookies.  After reading several, I combined  a couple that sounded good.  You can see the result.  I caught him red handed this time!  The DH (Darling Husband) liked these so much he was going to help himself to my little photography sample.  Not to worry, he got to sneak off with a few.  Hopefully some of them will last long enough for me to put them into his lunches this week.

Here is the version of the recipe I used,

1 cake mix (any flavor, I used a white cake mix I had in the cabinet)

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

1 cup chocolate chips

1/4 cup sprinkles (the valentine ones I forgot to use the other day)

Mix the first 4 ingredients together until all the dry mix is incorporated then mix in the chocolate chips and the sprinkles.  Use a small scoop and place rounded dough on to an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes, let cool on the cookie sheet at least 5 minutes before removing.  That's it, easy peasy! I thinking these are cute enough to package up and give as quick little Valentine gifts too.

Going to a "what's new in children's literature" conference tomorrow.  It should be fun.  I'll talk to you again soon.

Cowboy Christmas Cookies part II

This is day 23 of my personal creative challenge

If you've been reading my blog the last few days you may remember that I make a batch of Cowboy Christmas cookies for my gift platters.  Well, they didn't last long enough to go on the platters.  I went in to the pantry yesterday and found that the container only had about 4 cookies left, the guilty party admitted to eating them but said he thought I had more somewhere else and didn't realize these were for the platters.  Oh well, a second batch went together today and I think these turned out better than the first batch.  

 I started packaging them up as soon as they were cool enough so hopefully they'll make it out to our friends and neighbors.  For this gift I used another one of the cute little buckets I got at Target.  Then I made labels for the top of the containers.  I've still got to add a tag and some ribbon but, they're almost ready to go out the door.

I hope your day was filled with fun and laughter too.  I'll talk to you again soon.

Chocolate, chocolate cookies

It's day 22 of my personal creative challenge

Today I worked on some gluten free chocolate cookies for a friend of mine.  They have a meringue base and lots of chocolate.  I think they turned out pretty good and DH says "they rock", high praise indeed!  

I found these cute clear paint buckets in the Target $1 bins.  Perfect for a dozen of these little chocolate treats.  I just need to add a label and tag and ribbon, of course.  More goodies to be made tomorrow so I'll talk to you again soon.

Boxed treats

Today is day 13 of my personal creative challenge

Okay, I have to admit, today was difficult.  I didn't think I was going to get anything finished!  But, here it is, one box of cookies ready for the cookie exchange tomorrow.  Only 5 more boxes to go.  It wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that I couldn't find any boxes that I liked, that went along with the theme for the exchange, so of course I had to make some.  Sometimes I drive myself CRAZY!  It's going to be a late night so I better get back to work.  Thanks for stopping by I'll talk to you again soon.

Christmas Cowboy Cookies

This is day 12 in my personal creative challenge

This evening it was more baking for the neighbor's treat trays.  I was trying a new recipe for cowboy cookies.  There are several versions on the web and I read just about all of them.  I decided to use Bakerella's version to start off with but, I hit a few snags.  My first problem was I thought I had enough oats in the cabinet but when I opened the container... no joy, not enough for the recipe.  But in that same cabinet I had a bag of "Bare Naked granola" and that got me thinking, these cookies are flexible enough to have lots of goodies in them why not substitute the oatmeal with granola.  Okey Dokey, in the bowl it went.  Next, I had no pecans!  What!!! how could I have no pecans.  Well, I didn't and I wasn't going out in the rain/ice/snow to pick some up so I guess there'll be no pecans in this batch.  I added the rest of the ingredients and as I was mixing,  the dough was very dry and was not going to hold together to bake.  Again I though to my self, what should I add, milk? nah, I think I was channeling Paula Dean,  so I added more butter and another egg, better,  but now it was a little too sticky so I added more flour.  Are you getting the picture?  The stuff in the bowl kept getting bigger and bigger!  Finally, the first batch went into the oven.  They smelled really good, they didn't look bad, I sort of let them cool and tried one.  MMMM, I think I'm on to something.  

They have the chewy texture of an oatmeal cookie, lots of chocolate goodness, and the coconut adds another layer of texture and taste.  My adventurous DH tried one (after they'd cooled for a couple of minutes) He pronounced them tasty.  Okay, guess these will make it on to the treat trays after all.

I'm off to take another batch out of the oven.  Sleep well, and I'll talk to you again soon.

Creative Kitchen

This is Day 10 in my personal creative challenge

The holiday baking has started.  I decided to make these Candy Cane Blossom cookies for the cookie exchange at school.  I found this pretty red pearlized sugar at Michael's.  It's so sparkly.  These are super easy and look so pretty.  I'll probably bake extra for my neighbor treat trays.

You can find the recipe for these on the Hershey website here.  Well, I'm off to do more baking.  I hope your weekend is off to an excellent start.  Thanks for stopping by, I'll talk to you again soon.

Happy Father's day!

I did a little baking for Father's day.  Unfortunately I couldn't deliver today so dad, if your checking in, they are on their way along with a few other little gifts.

I hope all those special dad's had a great day today.  We love and appreciate you.  I'll talk to you again soon.