An Afternoon of Baking

Mmmm, can't you smell the yumminess?!

 So first I wanted to make these monster 'magic' cookies. It looked super easy for the girls to help out with. It was and to top it off they are extremely yummy. I found them here.

When I turn on the oven and heat up the house in the middle of summer, I try to bake more than one thing. I went ahead and whipped up these really easy muffins for the freezer (and probably tomorrow's breakfast). We love how moist and healthy these are. They use applesauce, a bannana and ground flax seeds to make it gluten free. I don't have flax seeds, so I replaced that with regular flour since we don't have any allergies to gluten. I found this recipe here.

Who could turn down a muffin with mini m&m's on it?? Not me! Yum!

Santa Cookies

I wanted to share the Christmas cookie I bake each year without fail. It's a little work but worth it, because it's so cute! I got the idea from a Publix magazine a few years back.

In the magazine article they of course gave you a recipe to use, but basically it's a roll out sugar cookie recipe. I use my favorite. Let me know if you want my recipe.

I roll out the dough and cut out hearts. I have a box of heart cookie cutters from Valentine's Day that has several different sizes, so I cut out a few X-Large and then a bunch of normal size hearts.

Of course bake the hearts and then cool. Once they are completely cooled, then flip them over so that the pointy side is the top. This will become Santa's hat. Ice the top with a regular white icing, don't use whipped or anything else funny just regular white icing.

Sprinkle red sugar on them to make Santa's red hat. Then fill a piping bag with the rest of the white icing and use a star tip to make the trim on his hat, the ball on the tip of his hat, and his beard. Use a bit more as glue to secure the two chocolate chip eyes and one red m&m nose.



I'll have to do a posting on the piping process because it took me awhile to figure it out and it is really helpful with kid projects. So here is my army of Santa cookies.

I've had a lot of fun with these at cookie exchanges and school lunches! Merry Christmas!

Monkey Cake

I thought I would share one of my baking projects with you. I asked Kaitlyn what kind of cake Adeline should have for her dedication and she simply told me that Adeline had to have a monkey cake. So, I went looking for what to do. I found a great idea at the Martha Stewart website and attempted to recreate Martha's handiness. I think I did pretty well. The Monkey Cake was a lot of fun to eat!