More cookies and cards

This weekend I baked almost 12 dozen cookies and I'm exhausted! I was really in the mood to bake this year and try out some new recipes. But I cannot possibly eat so many cookies on my own, so I decided to make up cookie bags for the people in my department at work. I ordered the small window coffee bags from Papertrey and used the Papertrey set Holiday Treats to decorate the bags with SU Night of Navy and Close to Cocoa ink. Each one has 4 butter toffee cookies, 4 peanut butter blossoms, 3 bon bon cookies, and 2 iced gingerbread people - one boy and one girl.

I've got two more Christmas cards to share - one that's more elegant and one that's just fun. They're both clean and simple designs, which seems to be the only style I can come up with lately! The first card uses PTI white as the base. The image is from A Muse and is colored with a silver sakura gel pen and SU markers. The sentiment is from the PTI set Take a Bough. I used Marvy punches for the circle and scallop circle and a white gel pen to dot the scallops. Clear gemstones act as headlights and the stitched ribbon "road" is PTI Pure Poppy.

On the second card I also used PTI white for the base and image piece, SU Brushed Silver for the strip, and PTI Pure Poppy for the border. The image is from a Basic Grey clear set I bought last year and is stamped in Encore silver ink. The berries on the wreath were dotted with a red sakura gel pen and I used a paper piercing tool to create a border for the image. The sentiment is from Lizzie Anne Designs and was stamped in PTI Pure Poppy.

This will likely be my last post until after Christmas as I spend the next few days finishing up holiday preparations and then spending time with family and friends. I hope you all have a safe, warm, and very Merry Christmas!

Cards and Some Cookies

I am typically not a gold person. I wear only silver jewelry, have different silvery tones (chrome, nickel) for lamps, curtain rods, hardware, etc. in my house. Even my car is silver! But there's something about Christmas that makes gold seem to work so well and I really love how both of these cards turned out.

For the first card, I used the ornament cuttlebug folder on SU's brushed gold cardstock and flipped it over so that the front of the card was debossed rather than embossed. That was mounted on PTI Pure Poppy cardstock, as was the sentiment panel. The sentiment is from Lizzie Anne Designs and is stamped in Pure Poppy ink. I used gold stickles to trace around the white sentiment panel, and finished off the card with Pure Poppy twill. Quick, easy, and I think pretty elegant.


For this 4.25" x 4.25" card, I used SU brushed gold as the base. I then created poinsettias (my favorite holiday motiff!) using white shimmery flowers from the bridal section of Michael's. I just pressed them onto my SU Real Red ink pad and, while they were laying on the ink pad, added a few drops of reinker to really saturate the flowers and get a deeper red. I put two flowers together with a gold brad in the center and adhered them with mini glue dots to the card base. The sentiment here is again from Lizzie Anne Designs, stamped with Palette Noir.

And finally I thought I'd show you the peanut butter blossoms for which I made the dough over the weekend. Try to look past my less than desirable photography skills, poor lighting, and reflective chrome plate! The Recipe Girl herself saw on my blog the other day that I was going to make these cookies and suggested that I roll them in red and green sugar rather than regular white granulated sugar for a more festive look. Duh! I don't know why I didn't think of that myself! But then I guess that's why she's called The Recipe Girl and I'm just The Girl Who Likes to Drool Over Her Recipes! The colored sugars do make for a more festive holiday cookie, and I swear they actually are red and green, not radioactive pink and green!

I still have so much to do in the next few days. I went from being totally relaxed because my family is not really exchanging much in the way of gifts this year to kicking myself for being so relaxed and leaving my homemade projects to the last minute. I have two scrapbooks that I need to finish that I'm making as gifts for friends of mine who went to Disney World with me in April (I've only had 8 months to work on them!!), some Christmas cards to finish and mail out, a mini scrapbook to make for another friend of mine, stocking stuffers for my mom, 4 more kinds of Christmas cookies, and gift packaging for all the cookies! And yet the motivation doesn't seem to be with me. Instead of being productive tonight, I sat on my couch, admired my Christmas tree, and ate peanut butter blossoms while I watched the new Muppet Christmas special. Then I watched the 2008 White House Christmas special. And now I'm sitting here typing about all I have to do instead of doing it! Will I never learn?!

Hope you're all being a lot more productive than I am!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas...

...or at least what Christmas would look like if it exploded in my kitchen! I make such a mess when I'm baking. This picture doesn't even show the half of it, or the flour all over my floor! It's so much fun though, except when I knock over an almost full bottle of vanilla and it spills all over my recipe...

I started off the night making peppermint bark using this recipe from http://www.recipegirl.com/. I didn't take a picture of my bark because, due to my impatience, I didn't wait until the second layer fully hardened. As a result, the minute I poured the warm melted white chocolate over the top, the middle layer began melting, so the top of my bark has a swirled effect that is much less pretty than it should be. But it still tastes phenomenal and really is so easy if you just wait the amount of time suggested for each layer. I'd even suggest putting the pan in the freezer rather than the fridge to make sure the layers really do harden up properly. A little side note: I had no idea how much 6 oz. of peppermint was in terms of candy canes. I crushed up 4 and it seems to have been the perfect amount.

Then I made a batch of gingerbread dough using this recipe on my friend Tammi's blog. I was going to make a double batch, but this is the first time I've made gingerbread cookie dough from scratch and in case I messed it up, I didn't want to have a ton of dough. It was super easy to make, so I can always whip up another batch later in the week. I shaped the dough into a log and put it in my freezer until I'm ready to make the cookies in the next few days.

I finished up this evening's endeavors with a double batch of dough for Peanut Butter Blossoms. My best friend's mom has made these for years and I finally got the recipe from her. I've tried other versions of this cookie, but hers is always the best! She said the dough freezes really well (and actually the baked cookies do as well) so I've got two logs of this dough in my freezer. Here's the recipe:

Peanut Butter Blossoms
1 stick unsalted butter
½ cup peanut butter
½ cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla
1 ¼ cups flour
¾ tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
3 Tbl more sugar
36 chocolate kisses, unwrapped

Put margarine, peanut butter, ½ cup sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, and egg into a large mixing bowl. Beat with electric mixer on medium until smooth and creamy.
Mix flour, baking soda, and baking powder together, and mix into creamed ingredients. Cover w/plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour or more.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease cookie sheets or use parchment paper or silicone mats.
Put the 3 T of sugar in a plastic bag.
Shape the dough into balls the size of walnuts in the shell. Shake three balls at a time in the bag of sugar. Place the cookies 2 inches apart on the cookie sheet.
Bake 8 minutes. Put a chocolate kiss in the center of each cookie and press down gently. Continue baking 2-4 minutes, or until chocolate has melted down a little.
Remove cookies with a spatula and cool on a cooling rack. (I let the cookies cool on the cookie sheet a little before removing to a cooling rack, or they fall apart sometimes.)

I'm going to make half the cookies with Hershey Kisses and half with milk chocolate Dove Promises just to compare. Dove is my most favorite chocolate, so I have a feeling they'll be pretty darn good!

I've got a bunch of Christmas cards to share and will do that over the next few days, so check back! For now, my feet and legs are tired from my evening in the kitchen, and it's after 10pm and I haven't eaten dinner yet, so I think I'll go curl up on the couch with some food and watch the end of It's a Wonderful Life on TV. I love this time of year!!

Cheese Balls

Cheese balls are, to me, a very holidayish food. I've never made one before, but this past week I had a few occasions for which I needed to make an appetizer and a dessert. I experimented with both a savory and a sweet version and both turned out very well if I do say so myself! I didn't take pictures of either of them, but thought I'd share the recipes in case you happen to be in need of some new ideas this season.

Tammy's Tempting Cheese Ball
1 (1 ounce) package dry ranch salad dressing mix
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup milk
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
12 ounces shredded Cheddar cheese
5 ounces roasted, salted almonds, chopped (I omitted)

If you want to see the actual directions, click on the link above. I didn't follow them. I am lazy, so I just threw everything into my food processor at once rather than mixing particular ingredients together and whatnot. It turned out nice and evenly mixed, so I'd recommend going that route if you have a food processor. This made quite a large batch, so I separated it into two balls and wrapped each in saran wrap. I made this the night before it was needed so the flavors had more time to blend and so the balls could set up properly. As noted, I did not roll the balls in chopped almonds. I do not like almonds, so I wasn't going to taint perfectly good cheese with some icky nuts. And I didn't miss them, nor did my friends who came over last night. We had the whole ball eaten in about 10 minutes flat. :-) I served these with Wheat Thins and Triscuits, but any cracker would do. Or even vegetable sticks I suppose, though I would never.

Chocolate Chip Cheese Ball
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup finely chopped pecans (omitted)

Again, I just threw all the ingredients (except the chocolate chips) into my food processor to mix everything up. Then I just stirred the chocolate chips in by hand. As with the savory cheese ball, I spooned it onto plastic wrap, shaped it into a ball, and allowed to chill overnight. Mine was a little softer than I think it should have been, I think because when "softening" the butter in the microwave I got carried away and partially melted it. If I wasn't so lazy, I would have added a little more powdered sugar to firm it up, but I didn't care enough to bother. I did not roll my ball in pecans as the recipe suggests because, again, that would have ruined the recipe for me. I served this with those holiday cookies that Keebler comes out with this time of year - the gingerbread men and those Jingles cookies - but graham crackers, chocolate wafers, or whatever other kind of cookie you like would be just fine.

Margarita Pie

Try to overlook the melty pie in the picture to the left. I am a HIGHLY impatient person, especially when it comes to food, and barely waited the 2 hours I was supposed to before I dug into the pie. Therefore, it wasn't quite as set as it should have been and doesn't quite look too pretty!

I had high hopes for this pie - ice cream: good, limeade: good, tequila: gooood! So I'm sorry to say I was a little disappointed in it. It was pretty tasty, don't get me wrong. And I WILL finish off the whole thing myself. I guess I was just expecting more of something. I didn't put in the orange-flavored liquer that the recipe called for because I didn't have any at home and I didn't feel like buying a whole bottle for the tablespoon it called for. So maybe that's why the taste was off? I got the recipe from http://www.pillsbury.com/ and it had high reviews, so I guess I thought it would be more 'wow'.

I think part of the problem was the crust. It wasn't as flavorful as I would have liked and I think if I were to ever make this again, I'd go with a graham cracker crust as opposed to this homemade pretzel one. The other problem with the crust is, because you have to keep the pie in the freezer, there's no crunch or crispness to it, which I like in a crust.

Oh well, it was a nice pie warm up before The Real Pie Club officially kicks off next week. Don't ask me to explain the RPC because then I'd have to kill you.

Margarita Pie

2 cups miniature pretzel twists
2 Tbsp. sugar
2 Tbsp. butter
1 6 oz. can frozen limeade concentrate, slightly thawed
1 qt. vanilla ice cream, slightly softened
1 tsp. grated lime peel
3 Tbsp. tequila
1 Tbsp. orange-flavored liquer

Heat oven to 375 degrees. In food processor bowl with metal blade or blender container, process pretzel twists until crumbs form. Add sugar; process with on/off pulses to mix. Add butter; mix well. With machine running, add 2 tablespoons of the limeade concentrate, processing until well mixed. Place mixture in ungreased 9-inch pie pan. With back of spoon, press mixture firmly in bottom and up sides of pan.

Bake for 5 to 7 minutes or until set. Place baked shell in freezer or refrigerator for 10 to 15 minutes to cool.

Meanwhile, in clean food processor bowl with metal blade or large bowl for electric mixer, combine ice cream, remaining limeade concentrate, lime peel, tequila and liqueur; process or mix just until blended. Spoon into cooled baked shell. Freeze 2 hours or until firm.

Cherry Turnovers

As promised, here's dessert! I have a magazine sitting on my desk at work with a big juicy cherry pie on the cover. For the purposes of the magazine, the pie is actually representing a graph, and the slices have to do with the results of a survey on salary compensation within my field. For my own purposes, the pie has done nothing but torment me all week long, because I love cherry pie. I LOVE it. It's probably the only pie on the planet where I go just as crazy for the filling as I do for the crust. So tonight, I had to have something with cherry pie filling. For a few seconds I contemplated just buying a can of filling and eating it with a spoon, but then I thought I'd try my hand at turnovers. I just bought a can of crescent roll dough and put a big spoonful of filling in the middle, then pinched up the corners. I ran into some issues because if I put too much filling, the sides wouldn't pinch shut and filling oozed out. On the ones where I cut down on the amount of filling, the flavor is too much crescent and not enough filling. But they're darn tasty anyway, and so super easy! I was wishing I had some confectioner's sugar to make a glaze with, but I didn't. And as usual, my laziness trumped my good idea!

Dessert...

Another recipe to share! I found this recipe for White Chocolate Cashew Pretzel Bars while browsing the Pillsbury website not long ago and knew I had to try it. I was waiting for an opportunity to make them when I wouldn't be forced to eat the whole pan myself - it IS bathing suit season after all! Well tomorrow night a group of friends and I are supposed to go to a Pops Summer Concert and we're all bringing picnic foods to share. I figured this was my perfect chance - bring half to the picnic and make the other half another Chatapalooza indulgence!

These were pretty easy to make (just a bit of waiting for the crust to bake then cool, then for the chocolate/cashew layer to set) and are delicious! They're the perfect blend of salty and sweet. YUM!

I made the crust in my silicone baking pan and it turned out perfectly golden brown on the bottom and popped out with no problems at all, I didn't even use any cooking spray. Since you can't cut on silicone bakeware, I let the crust cool in the pan, then popped it out onto a rack and "frosted" it on there. Worked perfectly! I hope you enjoy!