I am so fortunate to have you!

Happy Day after Valentine's! I know most people are ready to move on to the next holiday and swap out their red for green, but I have one more idea to share. Put it in the idea pot for next year because it is CUTE. Don't take my word for it though, just look:



Isn't it adorable? I got the idea at Eighteen25, only they did it for teachers for the first day of school. I book marked it months ago and had been eagerly waiting for the time to come when I could make it my own.



This can be an incredibly simple gift, make a cute tag, throw the cookies in the box, bam you're done. I like to make things hard though. I made the cookies from scratch. I even tried two different recipies! I also made my own 'fortunes.' Only instead of fortune's I did reasons I was fortunate to have them in my life. I also dipped the finished cookies in chocolate and decorated them with sprinkles. Fun, but time consuming!

As I said, I used two different recipies. If you are going to do this yourself (it's not terribly hard, but does require a little practice), you need to decide what is important to you. The one recipie tasted like a regular fortune cookie, and looked nice when it was done. The second recipie was much better tasting than a regular fortune cookie, but didn't fold as nicely (the cookie would tear/crack). So you need to make a chocie there. Since I was giving them as gifts and was giving lots of them I didn't have time to fool around with the cookies so I used the first recipie. Still tasty, and since they never had the second recipie, they don't know what they're missing anyway!

The tastier recipie I found at Haniela's. I didn't have the cake and cookie emulsion, so I used 1/2 t vanilla and 1/2 t. almond instead

The easier to fold recipie I found at About.com

I found a great video on how to fold them here

I would HIGHLY recommend wearing thin cotton gloves (I bought mine at CVS). You fold the cookies while they are hot, and doing it with out the gloves was no fun, I had to go buy some gloves.

And for funsies, here is an adorable idea I saw someone had for halloween

I hope you had a lovely holiday, and that you put this idea away for a time when you need to tell someone how fortunate you are to have them in your life.

Happy Valentine's Day

Whether you are with someone or not, I hope you have a wonderful Valentine's Day. Take time to tell someone you love them, and maybe do something little for them. I think everyone just wants to be and feel loved. I think Valentine's day is a great reminder of that!

Easy but impressive decorated sugar cookies

While I have always enjoyed baking, it is when I started decorating sugar cookies that I discovered how pretty you can make desserts. It actually started two years ago when I made large plain pink sugar cookie hearts for my friends and wrote their names on them for a little V-day gift. They were delicious, beautiful, and didn't really take a ton of skill, just patience. The cookies I made this year for Valentines are the same way:



To make these cookies all you need are:
1) Heart shaped cut out cookies (I used a chocolate cookie I ended up not loving, use whatever recipie you like. It will work best if the cookies have a flat surface on top when they finish baking, nothing that rises too much)
2) 20 second royal icing (I use Wilton's recipie and add a little vanilla. Then you want to run a spatula through it and count the time till the surface is smooth again. It should take about 20 seconds. Add a little powder sugar if it takes less than 20 seconds and a little water if it takes more than 20 seconds)
3) A squeeze bottle like these Wilton ones
4) A ruler
5) A toothpick, or clean needle, or knife

The first thing you want to do is to take your cookie and draw a grid on it. I used the ruler to keep my lines straight and evenly spaced, but you could probably just wing it too. I used a toothpick to draw the lines in the cookie, but would recommend a clean needle or knife since I had to keep using new toothpicks



Once you finish scoring all your cookies (a nice activity to do while watching tv), brush the cookies off well (since you'll have little crumbs from scoring them) and grab your squeeze bottle filled with 20 second icing. Pick a square and outline it, then color it in, all with the same icing. 20 second icing is a good consistency that won't spread much.





I used the toothpick you see in the picture to pop any air bubbles that there are in the icing. Now you want to start filling in squares! I found it best to do every other row first like this:



This gave the corners a chance to dry a little so they didn't run into each other. Next you want to keep filling in squares but none that touch length wise, only corners, until your cookie looks like this. You can see a couple places where the corners ran together and don't look as sharp. Doing every other row helps get rid of that.:



Then put it aside and start your next cookie. After an hour or two you can go back to the first cookie and fill in the rest of the squares, the result is cookies that look like these:



Yes, it is a little time consuming, I would say it took me about 10 minutes to decorate each cookie from start to finish (not including drying time), but it's easy and pretty! I hope you'll give it a try sometime!

Red Velvet Cheesecake Cookies

It's that time of the year again, when everything turns pink or red, and love is in the air. Or hate, if you're one of those people... I'm talking about Valentines Day! Whether you love it, or hate it, it's a great baking time of the year! Great sweets in happy colors with hearts galore. I love it! To kick off Valentines Day bake-a-palooza I made these amazing Red Velvet Cheesecake Cookies. I stumbled across them over at Two Peas and their Pod at Christmas time and have been waiting for Valentines to make them!

They're so pretty! And Red! Perfect for the holiday, and the best part? They're easy! They were inspired by the Red Velvet Cheesecake at The Cheesecake Factory, but my brother Ben (8) said they tasted more like a brownie (he also had some great ideas for making them into a brownie pie). Of course, the best part is the surprise in the middle, yum, cheesecake.

So if you want to make a treat that wows but doesn't take tons of effort, these are a definite winner.

<3 Red Velvet Cheesecake Cookies <3

*I made 11 large cookies, but you could make smaller ones*

For the cookies:

1 box red velvet cake mix (I used Duncan Hines)

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 large eggs

1/2 cup canola oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the cheesecake filling:

4 oz cream cheese, at room temperature

2 cups powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the white chocolate drizzle:

1 1/2 cups white chocolate chips, melted

Directions:

1. To make cookies, in a large bowl combine cake mix and flour. Whisk until clumps disappear(at least most). In the bowl of a stand mixer, mix together cake mix, flour, eggs, oil and vanilla extract. Mix until smooth. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap. The dough will be oily. Refrigerate for at least two hours.

2. To make the cheesecake filling, using a mixer, combine cream cheese, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract. Mix until smooth. Using a teaspoon, scoop out cheesecake filling and place on a plate. Continue scooping out cheesecake filling into teaspoon balls until you have 11. Place plate in the freezer and freeze for at least two hours.

3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. To assemble the cookies, take about 1/4 cup of red velvet cookie dough and flatten in your hands. Place a teaspoon of cheesecake filling in the center and wrap the cookie dough around the filling. Gently roll into a ball and place on prepared baking sheet. Scoop onto lightly greased or parchment lined baking sheets. Only bake 3 cookies at a time. The cookies are large and will spread. Bake for 11-13 minutes or until the cookies begin to crackle. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes. Remove from baking sheet to a wire cooling rack and cool completely.

4. Melt the white chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl or over a double-boiler. Drizzle the white chocolate over the cooled cookies. Let the cookies set until the chocolate hardens. Serve and enjoy!

Shared at Lady Behind the Curtain and at Creations by Kara and 733