The Best Dessert I've Made in a Long Time aka the Ice Cream Cookie Sandwich....

OK I'm back.  I have mostly recovered from my debilitating illness.  I kid, it wasn't debilitating, but I just do not handle colds very well.  On Friday when I got off work at 11 am (yeah it's awesome) I spent my afternoon baking cookies for the basketball team my husband coaches.  They had an ice cream social on Saturday to celebrate the end of the season.  We had a few cookies leftover but I was tired of eating just the cookies.  Plus it was really nice outside this weekend for the first time.  So we bought this...

This ice cream is good on it's own.  The cookies are good on their own.  But then I came up with a better idea...

Delightful...

These cookies are chocolate chip oatmeal.  I got the recipe from "What's Gaby Cooking."  This is a great site for recipes, especially if you like guacamole.

So what did you do this weekend?

What's your favorite summertimes dessert?

Gingerbread Cookies!-I'm Not a Total Failure

brothers

So after my major crafting fail on Saturday I really needed some success to pick me up.  My task for our work holiday party last week was to make a ginger cake.  After I made it, I realized I had all the ingredients (like molasses, ginger, allspice, etc) to make gingerbread cookies.  I have never made gingerbread cookies before so I decided to go for it.  I found a gingerbread cookie recipe in The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook that my sister (wut up L-Fab?) gave me for my birthday.

pic from anthropologie.com

Here's the recipe-ish...

Gingerbread Men Cookies (based on the recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook)
3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter (at room temp)
2/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 large egg
1/2 cup molasses

1-Sift the flour, baking soda and other spices together in one bowl

2-Mix together (with mixer) the butter and brown sugar until fluffy

3-Mix in the egg and molasses

4-Gradually add in a few spoonfuls of the dry ingredients until you have a nice dough

5-Split the dough up into three sections and wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight (I only did this for a few hours)

6-Preheat oven to 325 degrees

7-Pull dough out of fridge and let is soften for about 10 minutes

8-Sprinkle surface with flour and roll out the dough (add more flour to the dough so it doesn't stick)

9-Cut gingerbread men shapes out and bake for 10-15 minutes

10-Let the cookies cool and then decorate

Poor little guy lost a leg.

So these turned out pretty well.  I brought some in for my co-workers and they seemed to enjoy them (except the heartbreaking part where you have to eat off the head).  I did not make the royal icing that the cookbook suggested.  Instead I took the easy route and used the quick drying cookie icing from the store.   Overall, these ended up much better than my snowflake etched glasses.

Have you ever made gingerbread cookies?
Do you think Ted Mosby would count these as a Christmas themed movie snack?

Baby Shower Cookies

I was going to use my fancy cookie press to make cookies for my college roomie's baby shower.  But instead I was perusing my local Sur La Table and found these cookie cutters in the shape of bottles and baby carriages.  So I decided to get those instead.

My first round of cookies came out looking a little like blobs instead of baby bottles or carriages.  But once I used my fast drying cookie icing they started to look a little more like bottles.  The carriages never really looked like carriages so I just decided to focus on the bottles.  Obviously I'm not the best at cookie decoration but they came out pretty good.  I mean, people could at least tell what they were.

There was also a tasty cake and a bunch of other food that we made.  Overall it was a good time.  I'm not good at baby games though.  We had to smell baby foods and write down what we thought it was.  I wrote down pears when it was actually green beans.  And I put down apricots when it was actually carrots.  Oh well.  I'm excited to meet Baby Wunka!

I participated in the group gift (see above) which was something called a Pack n' Play.  But I also bought her a book, Goodnight Moon.  I remember it from when I was a kid.  My other top choices were The Little Engine that Could, The Giving Tree and Are You My Mother.

Can you tell that those cookies are supposed to be bottles?
Do you know what a Pack N' Play is?
Do you know what baby green beans smell like?
What's your favorite children's book?

L Cookies

My husband is having a big week at work.  His company is launching a new machine in stores throughout the country starting this week in NC.  So he has had to get up about 3 hours earlier than normal everyday and do tons of stuff he doesn't normally do for work.  Each day he has to take a cake to the store that's being launched (along with a bunch of other stuff) and I was not super impressed with the grocery store cakes he's been taking.  So I decided I should make him some cookies to go with it.

I had seen this Betty Crocker Cookie Icing in the store that is supposed to harden fast and works great with sugar cookies.  I thought this would be something I could handle on my work from home day (yeah they are still putting my cubicle back together).  So I bought some sugar cookie mix and some of the blue and white icing.  I planned to make some super awesome designs and words.  But when it got down to it, it was a lot easier to do an 'L' which stands for his company as well as the stores where they are launching.  I don't think they look that amazing but he seemed pretty impressed when I showed them to him when he got home last night.  So he will be taking them in today.  People like cookies right?  No matter how much blue icing they have on them.

Have you ever used this Betty Crocker Cookie Icing stuff?  I think Mo used them on some special Bachelorette party cookies one time.  It was pretty easy to use as long as I was doing something simple.

Do you like sugar cookies?

I swear I did not use any smurf's to make these cookies.

Easy Delicious Amazing Cookie Pizza

For the Great Mother's Day Cook-out/in of this past Sunday, I was put in charge of desserts.  I was thinking of making something amazingly fancy but I opted out of that and decided to go with an old standby.  Last week I was reminded of my love for Cookie Pizza's by this post over at It All Started With Mac and Cheese.  I usually make one of these around the 4th of July and it is always a hit with my family.  My version is a little different so here's my recipe below.

Cookie Pizza

1 roll/pack of slice and bake/refrigerated sugar cookie dough

1 container (pint?) of fresh strawberries

1 container (smaller than the strawberries, half pint?) of fresh blueberries (or any other fruit you want to use)

1 8 oz container of cream cheese

1 small container of cool whip

2/3 cup of powdered sugar

a spoonful of regular sugar

1/2 lemon

1-Roll out the dough onto a pizza pan or whatever kind of pan you have.  I put foil down on mine so it wouldn't stick to the pan.

2-Cook the cookie until it starts turning brown.  I think I cooked mine  for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees.

3-Let the cookie cool.

4-Mix powdered sugar and cream cheese with a mixer.  Then mix in the cool whip.

5-Spread the cream cheese mix onto the cooled cookie.

6-Wash and cut the berries into bite sized pieces.  Mix the lemon juice and sugar together and toss with the fruit.  (this just keeps the fruit from browning)

7-Arrange your fruit in a beautiful pattern on top of the cookie.

8-Slice into wedges and enjoy!

Can you tell what my cookie says?

Did you make your mom anything for Mother's Day?

"Hey, You Got Yourself a Fish Biscuit."

OK. I'm just going to say it. I thought the Season Premiere of Lost was awesome. MAYBE DON'T READ THIS IF YOU DIDN'T WATCH LAST NIGHTS EPISODE. I'm not going to be super spoilery but I am gonna list my favorite parts....after the picture of the fish bizkit. (from Lostpedia)

They include, first seeing Cindy show up to give Jack his extra liquor (and realizing where he was), the whole underwater statue toe scene (I felt like I was plunging into the water), Charlie!!!, Boone!!!, uh Desmond sitting beside Jack (awesome, I love you Des but where's Penny and why are you on this plane), the whole "I'm sorry you had to see me like that" scene, Jacob paying Hurley a visit, Claire in the cab, ahhh ok most of the stuff in the episode. Cept when my girl Juliette died. I always super liked her even when I wasn't quite sure if she was evil or good.

OK so anyways. B5 had the brilliant idea to make fish biscuits. They didn't turn out perfect but we tried our hardest and it started getting a little too close to 9 pm so we had to rush them at the end. Basically just make a fish biskit on paper. Cut it out. Cover it in foil. Make cookie dough (we used a bag of sugar cookie mix). Add food coloring. Roll Dough. Trace fish. Cut. Write 'Dharma' on your fish and bake. I think the pictures tell it best. .....

We made three Dharma fish bizkits and one with a K and S for when Sawyer and Kate were stuck in those cages with nothing to eat but fish biscuits. (FYI I'm not a Skater, I was in the past at some points but I'm totally pro Sulliette, even though Juliette appears to be dead. I may be a Jater but I'm not positive. I change my mind a lot))

And the amazing final product. Ok it got a little warped. We didn't cook it long enough and it puffed up a bit and we also may have put the fish bizkits a little too close to each other on the cookie sheet. Also a little too pink. Oh well. Still awesome. And tasty.

OH and if you are like, 'What the heck is a fish biscuit?" You can learn more here . But you should probably just go ahead and watch all of Lost.