I hope you had a great holiday season! Ours was hectic, as always, but good. Usually, you have family, friends, great food, sparkling decorations and gifts, so how can that be bad?!
Recipes
My first item to share is a dessert charcuterie board I made for a friend’s birthday and not really a recipe. She loves homemade buttercream frosting so I made it with frosting and a lot of little things to dip in it. The picture is worth several words all ending with “yummy”.
Pancake Mix Cookies (wearenotmartha.com)
- ¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- ½ cup packed brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 2 cups pancake mix
- 1 cup chocolate chips
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment paper or Silpats.
- In a stand mixer or in a bowl with hand mixer, cream together butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar until light and fluffy, 3-4 minutes.
- Mix in egg and vanilla until just combined.
- With the mixer on low, blend in pancake mix until just combined, taking care not to over-mix. Fold in chocolate chips.
- Place bowl in fridge to let cookie dough chill for about 30 minutes.
- Scoop about 3 Tbsp cookie dough (I use a #20 cookie scoop) onto prepared cookie sheets, about two inches apart. Cookies will spread a bit.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes, until cookies are just turning golden around edges. Let cool in pan for a couple minutes before moving to wire racks to cool completely.
I had some confetti pancake mix in my cupboard and hadn’t used it for its real purpose. I knew that there are several ways to make cookies from cake mix. So I searched and found the above recipe to use with my pancake mix. They turned out really well.
Cool Whip Cookies (breadboozebacon.com)
This holiday I kept hearing about cool whip cookies so I decided to try them. I made them in red and in green. The tops really kind of crinkled pretty so they made a nice addition to my cookie board and the kids really seemed to like them.
- 1 box vanilla cake mix
- 1 egg lightly beaten
- 8 ounces Cool Whip
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Red & green gel food coloring (liquid food color works too)
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a Sil-Pat.
- In a large mixing bowl, beat together the cake mix, egg, cool whip and vanilla. The dough will be thick and sticky.
- Divide the dough in half and place one half in a second bowl. Add a couple drops of red food coloring to one bowl and a couple drops of green food coloring to the other bowl. Mix the food coloring into each half of the dough. Add more food coloring as needed until your desired color is reached.
- Put the powdered sugar into a small bowl.
- Use a small cookie scoop (or 1 tablespoon measuring spoon) to portion the dough into the bowl of sugar. One scoop at a time, place the dough into the sugar and roll it around until it is completely coated. Place the dough ball onto the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining dough, leaving 2-inches between each cookie. (Seriously, the cookies spread A LOT.)
- Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until the cookies are set. The center of the cookie will still be soft, that’s okay.
- Remove from the oven and let cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes. Allow to finish cooling on a cookie rack.
Crockpot Cabbage Soup
I looked at a lot of recipes for cabbage soup, both in a crockpot and on the stove. In the end I kind of took the ingredients from each that I liked and cooked them all on low overnight. It came out great.
small bag of baby carrots or 2 large carrots cut up in chunks 1 small cabbage cut in about 1 to 2 inch chunks 2 cloves of garlic 1 medium white onion chopped 2 stalks of celery chopped 1 large can of stewed diced tomatoes 1 qt. vegetable broth 1/2 t. thyme 1/2 t. sage 1 bay leaf salt and pepper to taste
Grilled Cheese with ……………………………….wait for it…………………..pickles?!!
I had never heard of it before but saw it on a restaurant menu and started wanting to make it. I have now tried it with both dill and sweet pickles. Both are good. You can use pickle slices or I have found the stackers version of pickles to be easy to work with for this sandwich. I drain the pickles and then pat them with a clean paper towel to take some of the liquid away. My personal favorite bread to eat it with is rye but any kind will work. Let me know if you try this.
Hacking Away
*I love my Crockpot and even though I try hard not to let the inside under the liner get dirty it does, somehow, get these brown drips and drizzles on it. You can clean this very easy with a small glass bowl of ammonia sitting in the bottom of the crockpot without the liner in it. Just put the lid on and let it sit overnight. The fumes from the ammonia will make the drips and drizzles easy to wipe off in the morning.
*Have you ever needed sweetened condensed milk for a recipe and not had any on hand? You can make your own. Just combine 3/4 cup powdered milk, 3/4 cup sugar and 1/2 cup hot water and blend until smooth. This equals one can of condensed sweetened milk.
*Ever have a smelly sink drain in the kitchen or bathroom? Hydrogen peroxide poured down the drain will get it odor free.
*Do your shoes smell? Put them in a ziplock bag in the freezer overnight. The cold temperature will kill the bacteria making the odor.
*Ever needed softened butter for a recipe and used the microwave only to have it start melting and not just soften? Me! Multiple times. Put boiling hot water in a microwave safe glass. Then dump the water out and turn the glass upside down over the stick of butter (which is sitting on its end). You have perfectly softened butter in a few minutes!
Craft Projects
I used my Cricut to create letters and a design for a Buffalo Bills sign for my door. I actually made two.
In my basement was a 6″ X 1″ board which measured 6 feet. I cut it in half and sanded it. After wiping it off with a damp, lint free cloth, and letting it dry I painted each 3 foot piece white. After painting, I lightly sanded again so the vinyl would have a smooth surface to adher to.
On my Cricut I cut 6″ high letters, H, M, and E. I made sure sure they were 6″ high and 4″to 5″ wide so that they would fit nicely on the board. Online I had purchased 12 different Buffalo Bills designs for $1.99. I brought one of the designs into my Cricut design space and used that for the O. For all items I used permanent vinyl.
The final step was to measure the placement of each item to be put onto the sign. I used chalk to mark my measurements because I could easily wipe it off when no longer needed. I measured 3″ down from the top and placed the H. From the bottom of the H I measured 2″ down and placed the Bills symbol and repeated that process with 2″ between each one which left 3″ at the bottom of the sign. When all the vinyl was on the sign I used my hands to smooth out and make sure the vinyl was attached securely.
Christmas Tree
You know how I love the Dollar Tree stores! Here is a very cheap and easy little piece of Christmas decor.
I bought a wooden Christmas tree form and two of the self adhesive wall tiles you can buy at DT (well, $1.25T). I removed the jute loop from the tree.I placed the two tiles on the tree form in a way in which looked nice and covered the complete piece. Once, I was happy with that I turned the tree over on a cutting board and using an Exacto knife trimmed off the excess. I used the tip of the knife to go through the tile where the hole for hanging was at the top of the tree and then put the jute back through the hole and tied it again. Viola!
Another Cricut Project
I was going a little crazy with my Cricut this Christmas and although everyone my not have one I think these things could be done in other mediums. For instance, rather than use the Cricut for the following project you could paint the letters on the bottles and bake them in the oven to make them permanent. Directions for this method can be found online.
Anyway, I cut out letter spelling “hands” and “dishes”. I happend to use silver permanent vinyl. I made one set with white ceramic pump bottles and one set with black ceramic pump bottles. The bottles I purchased from Walmart for $4.97 each.
I measured down the bottles about 2″ and placed the letters on each bottle. Then I filled them with hand soap and dish soap and they made nice little gifts for not much money at all.
Next month will be here fast and I am already working on some projects for Valentine’s Day. Please leave a comment and let me know if you tried anything in this post or share one of your ideas with me and other readers. See you soon!
