Peanut Butter Baking Kick

Luke and I have been baking with peanut butter. First we made Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Muffins twice last week. Cara & Jason make these about once a week and love them. I have eaten one before but hadn't made them myself. They are super easy and have ingredients you probably have on hand. Go ahead and make a double batch so you don't have to make them twice in one week!

Then we made cookies. We were going to make Snickerdoodles but I didn't have any cream of tarter. So instead we made Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies that have been on my bookmarks to make for a while. These were chewy and have a lot of honey in them so you taste that flavor as well. Not overly peanut buttery- (I wouldn't like that). These were delicious!

Two more excellent recipes from Annie's Eats!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Andy got in on the action before he left for work. Here we are ready to pipe the outline on all of the cookies. Next, comes flooding. I just made pink and white because I didn't have any red gel food coloring. The squeeze bottles have thinned icing in them for flooding the inside of the cookie with frosting.

The cookies turned out really well! I had so much fun making them. I think the X's and O's are super cute. Should have made more of those! They were just so fragile I didn't think they'd turn out. But the icing helped cover the minor flaws! Annie's tutorial on royal icing helps a lot. I've only used royal icing one other time, about 3 years ago.

Here are a few cookies I'm taking to school for the helping hands bake sale tomorrow. I bought the cute heart plate a Tar*get.

Recent Recipes

Homemade Buttermilk Ranch dressing - from Annie's Eats of course. I made a couple batches of this about a month or so ago. Wilson loved it and kept asking for "salad with that yummy ranch dressing". It also helped to have homemade croutons on the salad as well. Those were delish! I found the crouton recipe here. She made the croutons for her caesar salad which also looks great. I just can't bring myself to make anything with anchovies...

Last night I made chocolate sugar cookies and regular sugar cookies. I used my valentine cookie cutters and today I plan to do royal icing on them! I'm looking forward to decorating the cookies. This is my first time to try either of these cookie recipes. The chocolate dough was very soft and I had to chill it again just to finish cutting out the cookies. I recommend you double the recipe if you want more than 1 dozen cookies. It didn't make much batter. The regular sugar cookie dough has almond extract. These smell delicious and taste great! The almond flavor is really nice. That recipe made about 3 dozen cookies. So I should have plenty to decorate this afternoon!

Last night a tried a Low-Cal Fettutine Alfredo recipe from my Food Network magazine. It was good. I'll post that recipe and pics of the cookies later.
:)

Our Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! I've been wanting to make sugar cookies with royal icing. So last weekend I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a few things I needed. I made the Pioneer Woman's sugar cookies and made pink royal icing following the instructions on this blog. The boys helped me make the cookies and cut out hearts. Andy helped me make the icing. Then we all worked to ice the cookies! I thought we did great for our first time using royal icing! Wilson was great at spreading the icing out on the cookies with a toothpick after "flooding" the icing in the middle. Luke did a great job putting sprinkles on the cookies. It was fun and definitely something I want to try again!

Tonight Andy and I are going to put the boys to bed and order take-out from Puccini's. We have a buy 1 dinner get 1 free there! I'm going to make homemade Chocolate Molten Cakes with whipped cream. We're also renting a movie. We don't watch many movies so I'm excited! We're off to deliver cookies to my grandparents and parents!

Valentine Treats

Today I made some treats for the boys teachers, a friend who recently had a baby, and to give as valentine's for the upcoming holiday! They helped a little until my rockin' mom came and picked them up to go to the park. (Thanks, mom!!) After making and baking a simple peanut butter cookie dough you poke a mini resee cup in the soft dough and top with mini marshmallow's. Thats what I knew the boys would enjoy doing! I saw these on my favorite food blog and knew I wanted to make them! I thought Andy and the boys would like them and that they'd make cute treats for Valentine's Day. Here is the recipe. The only change I had is that this recipe yielded 36 cookies instead of 24 for me. Also, you could easily halve the ganache recipe. I have a ton leftover. I saved it for Andy to put on icecream or milkshakes! Sorry my pictures are so bad! Follow the link to see better pics. Below is what the boys are taking their teachers!

The BEST Chocolate Chip Cookies. Ever.

Wow. I made the Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies from the recipe I found on Annie's Eats. They are so good. They are thick. They are chewy! They taste delicious! I made them last night after putting the boys to bed. Andy said several times how good they were. Today they are even better. This recipe will be repeated many times in my household!
*I told the boys who lost treats this morning due to fighting, wrestling, and generally not listening to their mama it was a shame b/c I made the best chocolate chip cookies ever!

Holiday Recipes

Caramel Corn
3 pkgs popped microwave popcorn
1 stick butter
2 cups light brown sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
Pour popped popcorn in a large bowl. Discard unpopped kernals. Melt 1 stick butter in saucepan over medium high heat. Add sugar, corn syrup, and salt. Stir until boiling. Turn down heat and let mixture bowl for 5 minutes without stirring. Then add soda and vanilla - it will bubble up- and stir. Pour mixture over popcorn and stir to coat evenly. Put popcorn on two cookies sheets. Then bake 1 hour at 250, stirring every 15 minutes.

Peanut Butter Patties
Ritz crackers (reduced fat)
Jif Peanut Butter (reduced fat)
Chocolate Almond Bark
1 T shortening

Make peanut butter cracker sandwiches. Melt chocolate in a double boiler, adding 1 T shortening to thin the chocolate. Dip sandwiched crackers in chocolate completely, shaking excess chocolate off. Let cool on wax/parchment paper until chocolate is set. I usually throw them in the freezer on the cookie sheet for a few minutes to speed the process along.

-Random-

This post is going to jump from one thing to another- just a warning. I didn't want to do a bunch of separate posts. Yipee! Our oven is working again! So I have had an easier time making dinner. Got to try a new chicken pot pie recipe and a twice baked shortbread recipe. Both were yummy.

We went to Andy's parents house for the last time on Thursday evening. It officially sold. Andy was a little sad, that had been his parents house for a long time, the house he grew up in. He took a bunch of pictures while we were there.

The boys had fun trick or treating last night and handing out candy. It was fun! Uncle Bill and Dan came over and ate pot pie with us and hung out during trick or treat time. Then my mom, dad, and Terry stopped by to see the boys. Mom and Terry did a little trick or treating with them so that was fun too. Today I had the boys lay out a blanket each and dump their pumpkins out. We had fun going through their stuff to see what they got. I threw a few things away and took out all the hard candy. I can't wait until they are old enough to trade candy - I remember doing that every year with Cara. We would either dump it out and look at it at Maw-maws house or on mom and dad's bed. I'll try to post halloween pics soon.

You know Luke's Halloween costume? It was pretty awesome. Well, funny story. Andy told me about one of his halloween's where he wanted to be a robot. Here is his story- on halloween his parents found a box and cut out holes for his head and arms. Then it was covered in foil. He said he was bummed about his costume but what was so awful was that a one of the houses another little robot came up to trick or treat in a totally awesome robot costume. Andy said he felt like his costume was so stupid in comparison. So maybe that's where the inspiration for Luke's robot came from- with old computer parts, lights that actually lit up and the black pipe. I told him I had to tell this on the blog! He was so cute telling me the story too!

We're all fighting colds. Ty is better though!

One more week of maternity leave. I'm sad. Don't want to go back. I love being at home with the boys.

Skillet-Baked Chocolate Chip Cookie

I've been making this for several years and it is so good! Andy had a graduation dinner Saturday night for the 3 youth that just graduated and their families. I was the chef, along with his help and my mom's advice! I knew I wanted to make Cranberry Chicken so then mom and I decided on green bean casserole, salad, rolls, and rice. It was a good meal! I wanted the dessert to be yummy but simple so I settled on the skillet cookie. It reminded me how delicious it is since I haven't made it in a long time. I've made the cranberry chicken for several people and am always asked for the recipe so I'll post it too!

Cranberry Chicken
4 chicken breasts
1/2 cup water
1 envelope lipton onion soup
1 can jellied cranberry sauce
Mix the last three ingredients. Pour over chicken. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for 1 1/2 - 2 hours. Or you can throw it in a crockpot for a couple hours.

Skillet-Baked Chocolate Chip Cookie
2 cups flour
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
2 t. vanilla
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips (recipe suggests using 1/2 milk chocolate and 1/2 semi-sweet)
vanilla icecream

Preheat oven to 350. In a bowl mix flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside. In another bowl cream butter and sugars about 2 minutes. Add egg and vanilla; mix. Add flour mixture, beat until just combined. Stir in chocolate chips.
Pour dough into a 10 inch iron skillet. Press to cover bottom of pan. Bake until edges are brown and top is golden, 40-45 minutes. Don't overbake, cookie will continue to cook a few minutes out of the oven. Serve in wedges with vanilla icecream!

Valentine Cookies

Last night the boys and I made heart shaped Valentine cookies. I took the easy way out and bought the bag of dry cookie mix. Then just had to add an egg and butter. Wilson and Luke helped roll out the dough, used cookie cutters, and best of all added sprinkles! Here are a few pictures! There aren't many action shots because we were busy little bakers!

Making Cookies with Wilson

Wilson and I decided to bake M&M cookies today. He helped me each step of the way!

Yay! We love M&M's!

Aren't they pretty! I think all of the bright colorful M&M's are what make the cookies taste so good!

Yes, he ate a lot of batter through the process. I'm not much of a raw cookie dough eater, he and his daddy sure are!

Yummy, the final product sure is tasty! Gramma stopped by and got to eat one for herself. She even took a few home to share with Gampa!