Make This!!!

I found this recipe in the current issue of Kraft’s Food & Family Magazine. It is a winner! These bar cookies are perfect for a party or potluck and keep well for several days, if they last that long!

Gingerbread Caramel Bars
Serves: 36 bars

1pkg.  (2-layer size) spice cake mix

2tsp.  ground ginger

1/2cup  butter, melted

1 egg

35 KRAFT Caramels

1 can  (5 oz.) evaporated milk

1 pkg.  (4 oz.) BAKER’S White Chocolate, coarsely chopped, divided

 

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Line a 13×9-inch pan with foil, with ends of foil extending over sides; spray with cooking spray.  Beat cake mix, ginger, butter and egg with mixer until blended.  (Dough will be stiff.)  Press 2/3 of the dough onto bottom of prepared pan.

Bake for 10 to 12 min. or until lightly browned.  Meanwhile, microwave caramels and milk in microwaveable bowl on HIGH 3 to 3-1/2 min. or until caramels are completely melted and sauce is well blended, stirring after each minute.

Drizzle caramel sauce over baked layer in pan. Reserve 2 Tbsp. chopped chocolate; sprinkle remaining over caramel sauce. Crumble remaining gingerbread dough over dessert. Bake 25 to 30 min. or until center is almost set. Cool completely.

Microwave reserved chocolate in microwaveable bowl on HIGH 30 sec. to 1 min. or until completely melted, stirring every 30 sec.; drizzle over dessert.  Let stand until chocolate is firm.  Use foil handles to lift dessert from pan before cutting into bars.

Note: I will leave the white chocolate out next time and just keep it as a drizzle. I felt the taste of the chocolate competed with the caramel.
Update! I made these again last night and substituted pumpkin pie spice for the ginger. Wow! It made the cake so much spicier.☺

Make This!!

Wafeltjes

aka: Belgian Waffle Cookies!

 I found this recipe on the blog, Jillian in Italy (via Pinterest). These cookies looked so delicious, I had to make them. Will I make them again? Probably not. They were extremely time consuming, since the batter made a lot and I didn't have the foresight to only make half a recipe. I ended up giving half the cookies away and we still had tons leftover. These cookies also have 3+ cubes of butter in them (yes, THREE!) and six eggs. Not the healthiest. :/

 

 Whip up half the recipe (trust me on this: only make half a recipe, unless you are feeding a crowd), heat up your waffle iron, cook, then eat!

Since this recipe is in grams, I used my handy kitchen scale & weighed the ingredients in grams. If you don't have a kitchen scale, you can type the grams into this website and it will convert the recipe into cups for you.

Wafeltjes by Jillian in Italy
500g pastry flour ( I used a 50/50 mix of cake flour & all purpose flour)
400g butter
300g sugar
6 eggs
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 vanilla bean (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)
pinch of salt
1. Gently melt the butter (make sure it doesn’t color).
2. In the bowl of your mixer put in the flour and sugar.  Add the baking powder, salt  and the scraped out seeds of the vanilla bean (or the tsp of vanilla extract).
3. Mix on medium low speed and slowly add the eggs one at a time.  Let mix for one minute then slowly pour in melted butter.
4. Cover bowl and put in fridge for at least one hour.
5. After letting the dough sit in fridge heat up waffle iron.  Make small balls of dough and drop onto waffle iron. My batter was still slightly fluid like regular waffle batter & I was not able to make balls of dough.
6.Let bake until golden brown and remove from iron with wooden skewer onto a cooling rack.  Store in covered container.  Makes: a lot!

Make This!!

 

Ritz Cracker/Rolo Cookies!

 

These cookies take 10 minutes max (including unwrapping the Rolo candies).

Preheat oven to 250*.

Place one sleeve of Ritz Crackers on a baking sheet. Put an unwrapped Rolo candy on each cracker.

Bake for 6 minutes (NO MORE, NO LESS), remove from the oven & cover the Rolo with another Ritz Cracker (press down gently!).

I dare you to eat just one!

Make This!!

Here's a (new to me) way to make chocolate chip cookies. Just cut the amount of sugar listed in the recipe in half & replace it with a small (3 oz) box of instant vanilla pudding.

Delish!  Thanks for the tip, Kimberly!

Make This!!

Evil Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Why are they evil? Because this recipe calls for 3 cubes of butter. THREE! I usually only make a half recipe, as this cookie is really rich (think shortbread).

Evil Chocolate Chip Cookies

3 cubes butter, room temp
1 c powdered sugar
2 1/4 c flour
1 package of mini choc chips

Mix first three ingredients with your hands. Stir in minis. Chill 30 minutes. Drop by teaspoons onto slightly greased cookie sheets. Bake at 325* for 8-10 minutes.

Cookies

Christmas cookies!
Lots of nervous energy waiting for the Apple Cup to start. I had to bake something to keep busy. Once again, I used the I Am Baker recipe for frosting/decorating. It was much easier this time as I used a cookie cutter instead of my own template.

Go Team!

I love the I Am Baker website! Great tutorials for cookies. I made these Camas Papermaker cookies after trying unsuccessfully to make my own Camas cookie cutter. I Am Baker had a link to the University of Cookie website where I learned the secret: photo paper! Great season Papermakers!

I also tried to make a WSU cookie. It's such a hard logo to make cookies out of! So...I settled for the next best thing...I made UW cookies for my friends at work.

You know, to wish them 'Good Luck' and all on Saturday. ;)

GO COUGS! BEAT THE HUSKIES!!

Cookies!

I have been using Just Whites whenever I've made royal icing for my sugar cookies. The truth is, none of us like the taste very much. I Am Baker posted a royal icing tutorial this week. I printed it out and made her icing recipe. It tastes much better and is so simple! I made some last night and frosted a bunch of dog cookies. They were a disaster! I tried again today. This time I did not rush myself. I have to say....I love the results! They were almost too cute to eat! These boys remind me of Buddy! Sweet boy...I miss him.

Check out I Am Baker's Oreo Cakester Petit-Four goodies. These look yummy!

Yay!

Good news for all you Circus Animal cookie fans! I just found out that Kellogg's brand is purchasing the rights to some of the famous Mother's Cookies recipes. Read about it here.

Look What We Found!!!!

I had to stop at Safeway today to pick up some Halloween cookies for Nas to take to school tomorrow. We spotted the Circus Animals in the cookie aisle. There were 4 packages left and we only bought one - not wanting to be greedy.

Camels are all I eat. Delish.

Mmmm good!

Happiness!

Say it isn't so!

The kids and I heard on the way home from school that Mother's Cookies has gone out of business. We were so sad! We ran to Fred Meyer and looked for the Circus cookies. We thought we would stock up on them. FM was completely sold out of many of Mother's cookies and isn't expecting any more. Darn! This is the time of year when they come out with the harvest color circus cookies too. We are bummed. :(