Baking Monday – PB Choc Chip Shortbread

Take note, peanut butter lovers - these are seriously good! Shortbread, pb, and chocolate: three of my favorite things all wrapped up together.

The original recipe calls for sea salt, which gave the cookies a slight salty crunch. I found that to be distracting, because I couldn't decide if I liked it or not. (I notice today that in the updated version of the recipe, sea salt is changed to regular salt. If you're into the salty/sweet thing, give the big salt a try.) I did these as slice-and-bake, but looks like you could do them as drop cookies or cutout as well (mini chips would probably work best for that). One recipe makes two dozen small mouth-melting cookies. Enjoy!

70th Birthday Cookies

A friend ordered this assortment for her husband's birthday party. She didn't have any ideas for the theme except - maybe something Irish? I LOVE the way these turned out! I also used Lila Loa's color matching trick on the icing this time around. Genius!

I've long admired Sweet Sugarbelle's creative use of cutters, but can't say I've ever been very good at it. (See: snowman / number eight "duh" moment, for example.) But I was really proud of this one! I made a beer mug by piecing parts of other cutters together: a cupcake, a number "6", and the bottom of a pill bottle (leftover from my sister's graduation from pharmacy school.)

Wah-lah! Beer mug! Cheers!

Baby Shower Goodies

Up today: treats for our good friend's baby shower last week. These baby blue onsie cookies were wrapped up for favors.



Brown sugar cupcakes with vanilla buttercream icing ...

... and a two tiered cake: chocolate with peanut butter filling and vanilla with raspberry.

I was SO nervous transporting this cake! I can't imagine how bakeries do it all the time!

Sweet treats to celebrate a little boy who we are looking forward to meeting! 

Baking Monday - Chocolate Surprise Cookies

This recipe is a re-run, because there was Easter candy to use up yet again. I bought an assortment of chocolates to put out during our party: Dove eggs (yum), Crunch eggs (yum - according to the children), and caramel Hershey's kisses ... a surprising yuck. They just weren't very good. I saved the remainders thinking they could at least be used in a baked good. The kids also collected lots of Reese treats on their egg hunt, so those also got the surprise cookie treatment.

These cookies are pretty yummy, but it was discovered that the candy also has to be good for it to be a winner.



Peanut butter eggs - WIN! Delicious! Disappeared quickly!

Hershey's caramel kisses - yuck! Still no good! Maybe we just got a bummer batch, but - yuck!

I'm sticking with Rolos for next year! 

Mini Candy Crush Cookies!

I'm thinking that Candy Crush sweets and parties will start popping up all over the place soon (how awesome would that dessert table be?) since so many of my friends seem to be just as addicted as I am, and many bakers will probably do it much better! (I realized afterwards that I forgot to do the color bomb, rats!)



It's been forever since I've made sugar cookies just for fun, so these were a happy treat. I used leftovers from a recent order to make these tiny goodies. I used this mini cutter set to make most of the shapes (plus an icing tip for the circles/ovals and the bottom end of a moving van to make the squares.) Half of the colors were already in piping bags, but the rest were spread by hand since the cookies and quantity were so tiny. See the spotty background in the light blue squares? Completely unintentional - I had another batch of icing go spotty last weekend for an order, grrrr. However, it made a perfect jelly texture!

The kids were so funny - one by one, they saw the dish on the counter, said, "Oooh! Little cookies!" then paused for a moment and made a happy gasp when they recognized the shapes. Thanks, Candy Crush for sucking valuable hours out of my day! (It's probably a very good thing to only get five lives at a time!) 

Baking Monday - Soft Sugar Cookies

Fun cookies today! Jump over and read the description of the recipe - how could anyone NOT want to try them?



The dough got a double mini scoop - don't they look like ice cream? Adorable!

Finished off with vanilla (green) and cinnamon (light brown) buttercream that happened to be leftover in the fridge.

The recipe calls for oil in addition to the butter. I was a bit wary, because I haven't had great luck with oil in cookie recipes in the past, but no fear - these are really good! Both soft and crunchy at the same time, and the flavor is excellent. I split the recipe in half, which made thirty jumbo-sized cookies. These would be a nice addition to my sugar cookie rotation. Yum! 

What Do You Hear? Sound Game

Okay, so I did plan one game for the kids over spring break. I've always brought out a basket of plastic eggs as part of our Easter decorations - the kids always find fun things to do with them for a couple of weeks, then they go away until next spring. This year, they were purposed!

I originally saw the idea on Kirsten's blog and saved it in my things-to-do-someday file. I've been trying to do more auditory sensory activities lately with Clark, so it was a good time to try it out.

I filled the eggs with little things found around the house and labeled each one with a number.

The kids had to shake each egg and guess what could be inside. Some were deceptively similar!



It was pleasantly surprising to see all three kids get in on the action. Not making a big deal about it seems to be the key to getting everyone involved. 

Here's a copy of the game sheet - it's labeled with things that should be easy to find around the house. Personal use only, please!

Download What Do You Hear? game sheet here.