The Twelve Days of Goodies- Day 1

So I haven't been posting lately because I've been working on finding 12 different holiday goodies to share with you all. I tried to find recipes (mostly off of pinterest) I have not made myself. And I tried to have step by step pictures for you on the whole process. To start my twelve days of goodies, I picked one that is simply Christmas crack. This stuff is sooooo good and sooo hard to stop eating. Also, it's sooooo simple to make. What could be better at this busy time of year.




Christmas Crack


1 cup unsalted butter


1 cup light brown sugar


2 cups semi sweet chocolate chips


40 saltines crackers





Preheat the oven to 350.


Line your jelly roll pan with tin foil and spray with cooking spray. Lay a flat layer of crackers on your pan.

Melt sugar and butter together until it reaches a boil. Reduce to a shimmer and cook for 5-6 minutes or until mixture is thickened and all the sugar is dissolved.

Pour the mixture over the crackers. Spread evenly.

Bake for 5-8 minutes or until the toffee becomes bubbly. Remove from oven and let sit for 3-5 minutes.

Sprinkle the chocolate chips over the toffee. Let sit a few minutes and then spread melted chips over the toffee. If you like you can add nuts or some other kind of topping, but I chose to keep it simple (this year).

Let set up by sitting out or speed things up and refrigerate. Once set, break apart into pieces...

and start eating. Although I do warn you once you start, you may not be able to stop. I know I had a very hard time. :)

Coming Soon

Short post today. Since I really didn't get any feedback from my last post, I haven't made anything to show you. I am however working on a project dealing with cookies and christmas. See please check back to see what's to come.

I Got Nothin'

I try an post here every Tuesday, but today I really don't have anything to share with you. So this leads me to ask anyone who is reading this...what would you like to see. I'm serious, I would love suggestions. I'll listen to all and do my best to create or recreate what you have suggested. I do have some things planned for future blogs with the holidays coming up and I would love to have more. So leave a comment and lets see what we can come up with.

Boo, Meow and Jack

With yesterday being Halloween, I volunteered to bring a sweet treat to my oldest daughter's Halloween school party. I went back and forth on what I should make, and then with time running out, finally decided. Long long time ago I bought a small Wilton Halloween cookie cutter set. I believe I only used it once before this, so after dusting it off, I got to baking. I made 6 dozen sugar cookies in three different shapes. And let me tell you, my daughter was worried that the 6 dozen cookies would not be enough for herself and her 13 other classmates. Thankfully it was plenty. After the cookies were cool, I iced them with some royal icing and then added a few touches to finish them off.

Here is the plate of cookies at school ready for the kids.

The ghosts were my favorites to look at, not my favorite to ice.

Black cats and... jack o'lanterns to round out the group. The kids loved them all. Hope everyone had a fun and happy Halloween.

Who Pissed off Tweety?

I'm the first to admit, I really don't know much about Angry Birds. It's not a game that myself or my kids have started playing, so I only know what I know from friends and things I might see on tv. So when my friend Aimee asked for Anrgy Bird cupcakes for her son's birthday, I'm not going to lie, I was a little worried about pulling it off. Her son loves the game, I'm pretty sure he has it mastered and I wanted to make cupcakes that would do him proud when he took them in to school for all his classmates. So after searching pinterest to see what others have made, here is what I created...
I introduce to you the Angry Birds.

Red Bird...lovin the eyebrows.

Yellow Bird...don't mess with his eggs.

Blue Bird...look out Green Pigs, he's coming for you.

And last, but not least Black Bird...the birthday boy's favorite.

It's in the Bag.

I realized yesterday that I had nothing to share today, my deadline that I gave myself when I started this blog. And while I absolutely love the cookies from last week, I came up with a last minute, easy peasy treat for this post. Lately I have been looking at a lot (and I do mean a lot) of Pinterest. If you don't know what that is, a friend on Facebook described it the best...she said "It's like when you were getting married and you cut all the stuff you liked out of bridal magazines and stored them in folders or a scrapbook or whatever. But digital. And you get to share it." So with all the looking I have done, I saw a big cookie crammed full of others treats and decided to make my own. And the best part about these cookies is I didn't have to go shopping for any added ingredients. A couple of weeks ago when I was food shopping, I noticed that Betty Crocker Snickerdoodle cookie mix was on sale for 99 cents, so I bought it not really knowing what I would do with it. Grabbing that mix along with some dark chocolate chips (which are now a staple in the pantry), a mix of dried fruits that I had high hopes of my kids eating (they had other thoughts) and some roasted soy nuts (another failed hope for the kids' diet). I followed the recipe on the bag, but did add about another 1/2 tablespoon of water. And instead of rolling the cookies in the supplied cinnamon sugar mix, I added a little bit of it to the batter and saved the rest for another day.. I used an ice cream scoop to portion out the cookies...I wanted really big cookies this time around (I usually make bite size). After baking for 20 -25 minutes at 350, I had my post for today.
Have fun, mix things up and enjoy!

I Love You to the Moon and Back

One of my oldest and dearest friends is expecting her first child next year. I am so happy for her and wanted to send her a little something to celebrate baby. I had a onesies cookie cutter that I knew I wanted to use, but I also wanted something a little more. So after some thinking I came up with moon cookies.

First I started with a round sugar cookie (little side note, my friend's nephew labeled my cookies the best cookies he had ever had...just saying). I used a yellow food color marker to draw my moon on to the cookie.

Then I used some stiff royal icing to outline the moon.

Once the outline had dried, I used the flooding technique to fill the moon. Then I took some stiff dark blue royal icing to make an outline on the rest of the cookie. After drying the moon and outline, I once again did the flooding technique to complete the cookie.

To fully finish off the look I was going for, I made an eye and mouth with a brown food color marker and then used a pink food color marker for the moon's check. Then I brushed the moon with some pearl luster dust. I also used pearl luster dust to create the stars in the sky.

Once again, the flooding technique was used to make the little onesies.

Here's the complete set and I'm happy to report that Mommy, Daddy and even baby are enjoying them.