Inspired by Stephanie and Electra, we spent the week making cookies! Here we are making buckeyes for a homeschool moms' party that I attended:
The buckeyes won first place! I didn't even know it was a contest, or I would've made something more gourmet!
Buckeyes are easy to make. Melt/mix 2 sticks butter with 2 cups peanut butter and add 1 1/2 pound powdered sugar. Form into balls and freeze. Dip in melted chocolate and refrigerate. (grandma Chr.'s recipe)
Next, for "us" we started with fudge. We wanted to start with the cookies/candy that would keep well without the quality being compromised. Bunny enjoyed making the fudge; she didn't know what ingredients went into fudge before we started. I used the recipe on the marshmallow creme jar, have used it for years and it has always turned out well.
Gemma was a big help of course. Here she is trying to get into the marshmallow creme:
Next we make French Butter cookies, another family favorite. It is a Martha Stewart recipe
http://www.marthastewart.com/313333/french-butter-cookies
that I started making more than 10 years ago. These are one of my favorites because I love butter cookies, but this year it was Marcus who requested them. They also keep and mail very well.
Gemma helped put in the decorative button holes:
Next were sugar cookies (to be decorated later), Russian teacakes, and lemon meltaways. We also did gingerbread cookies. I chose Joy of Cooking's recipe, which I was a little apprehensive about because it said "reduced fat" and that always makes me leery, but Joy had not done me wrong yet so I went for it. They turned out well! It was a good sturdy dough that had great flavor as a baked cookie, not too spicy or sweet. I think they were just billed as healthy because they are a traditional European cookie and those are usually less fat/sugar (except France). I let the kids play with the leftover dough:
Bunny had baking on the brain and she wanted to make some dog treats for Daisy. She did them all by herself, dishes and all! http://www.bullwrinkle.com/Assets/Recipes/Peanut%20Butter%20Puppy%20Poppers.htm
Today I finished up by mixing the batter for grammy's chocolate cookies, another one of Marcus' favorites
http://www.marthastewart.com/316883/grammys-chocolate-cookies
and some M&M cookies for the kids. Will bake those tomorrow so they will be fresh. In total 8 kinds of cookies plus the dog biscuits and maybe buckeyes tomorrow if I get to it. I could count the total number of cookies but the number would be way low since we ate "a few" straight out of the oven....
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
