Good afternoon!!!  Well, it's the day before Valentine's Day, and I am sure many kitchens were busy with the wonderful smells of Valentine's!!!  My baking starting at 8:30 this morning, and my kitchen got finished clean up at 3:30 this afternoon.  Well, we had to take time for lunch with my sister-in-law and nephew.  I made up a meat sauce last night and threw it in the slow cooker so I could just heat that up while the cookies were baking this morning, and then I just cooked up some penne and we had shredded mozza cheese for on top!!!  They enjoyed it - I used country sausage and ground beef in my meat sauce - love using some sausage for some kick!!!

Today, I baked a batch of the Grandma's Best Sugar Cookies like the other day, except I only have 1/2 butter and 1/2 margarine.  Hubby did not like them as well, and so I know now that butter is better for these cookies just as they had said.  Also, both times I have left out the baking soda!!!! and yet they raised just fine because of the cream of tartar I guess!! LOL!! 

My sister-in-law brought over some butter so I could make some real buttercream icing.  Sorry I forgot to take a picture of it, but I will share my recipe, and a picture of the cookies all decorated - no cheating with pre-made icing this time!!!

Easy Buttercream Icing

1/2 cup butter, softened (wasn't totally softened, so used the pinterest tip of grating it. IT WORKS!!)
4 and 1/2 cups icing sugar
1 and 1/2 tsp. vanilla (I only used 1 tsp)
5 Tbsp. milk (I only needed 4)

Cream butter till light and fluffy.  Beat in vanilla, and then I put in icing sugar 1/2 cup at a time, and then 1 Tbsp. of milk, until I had the desired consistency.  (Some days I use the 5 Tbsp. of milk, so I do not know if the weather has anything to do with it or the temp in the house.)

Yield : About 3 cups of icing - Will frost 24 cupcakes.

I also made a very easy and wonderful cookie that I found from the website
http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2013/01/23/strawberry-chocolate-chip-cookies/

Of course, I had to put my own little twist on it for Valentine's, so here it is:

Strawberry Your Choice Chips Cookies

1 box (18.25 oz) strawberry cake mix (I used Duncan Hines mix)
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 large eggs
1/3 cup canola oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 and 1/4 cup white chocolate chips and Valentine M&M's (mixed to make the right amount)

Preheat oven to 350 F.
Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, whisk together cake mix and baking powder.

In smaller bowl, whisk together eggs, canola oil, and vanilla extract.

Add liquid to the dry ingrdients, and mix well with wooden spoon until all the dry mix has been incorporated.

Add in choice of chips and mix together.

Using a cookie scoop, place cookies on cookie sheet.  Note: they do expand!!

Bake for 10 minutes - do not let the cookies get brown (ssshhhh - a couple of mine did).  Remove from oven and allow cookies to cool on cookie sheets for 3 minutes.

After the 3 minutes, remove from cookie sheet to a wire cooling rack to finish cooling.

Yield : 2 and 1/2 dozen with using the cookie scoop.

These cookies can be stored in an airtight container for up to a week....if they last that long.  Oh my, the possibilities one has now for cookies - all the different cake mixes and chips and all!!! 

Thank you for joining me today, and Happy Valentine's Day to you all tomorrow!!!

Hello Friends!!!
   Well Valentine's is just two days away, and I need to start on my goodies for my hubby.  Tomorrow my sister-in-law is coming over, and we are going to bake some cookies for the children, so I wanted to get Hubby's homemade chocolates made today.  So I will share my "Special" recipe - lol.  Enjoy!!

Take one bag of your choice of chips - hubby loves Hershey Special Dark.

 Pour contents of bag into chocolate melting pot.  Turn on high until chips are melted.  Stir frequently to help the melting process.  (You can also melt over boiling water in a double broiler, or in microwave.)

Have molds ready.  These silicon molds are for making ice cubes, but I find they work perfect for making chocolates.  I got mine at the dollar store up the street. (Not the Dollar Tree store.)  Pour melted chocolate into chocolate funnel - so much easier for filling without being too sloppy.  Fill molds to desire thickness of chocolate.  If intricate, like the Love words - then I would recommend to fill fairly full. 

After you have put chocolate in molds,  pound to make sure the air bubbles are out of the chocolate.  Place molds on cookie sheet so to lay flat and place in freezer for a half an hour to a full hour.  Take out of freezer, and press out from the bottom of the mold.

I then bagged each of the Love chocolates in a seperate zip close snack bag.  Then I placed the snack bags in a nice little cellophane Valentine Baggy and stapled shut.

I think Hubby is going to love these, even tho they will be very rich, they will last him a while!!!
I hope you have enjoyed looking at my creations - as you can tell, it does not take a smartie to figure these out - lol
Have a great day!!!

Oh my, how the time has gone by since my last blog.  I am so sorry my dear friends,  I ended up with that nasty flu over the Christmas holidays, and there was  no cooking or baking done for Christmas here this year.  But finally seem to be getting back on my feet, and a little cooking being done now and then.  I did take some pictures of some things, so I will try to catch you all up on some things.

Hope everyone had a Blessed Christmas and a great New Year!!!

Well, today I will share a recipe with you that I got from a free book from Amazon entitled Grandma's Best Cookie Recipes by Marg Ruttan.  This is a sugar cookie recipe, and became a big hit at the Super Bowl party - lol - the little girls requested "cookies with icing and sprinkles" lol.  Enjoy!

Grandma's Best Sugar Cookies

1 cup butter (margarine may be used, but the taste of butter in these is recommended)
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
1/2 tsp. salt
2 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Preheat oven to 375 F.
Cream together butter and sugar.  Add eggs and beat thoroughly.  Stir in vanilla, cream of tartar, and salt.  Gradually mix in flour.
Using cookie scoop, scoop dough onto ungreased cookie pans. You may also roll into 1' balls and place on ungreased cookie pans.  Using floured tines of fork, gently press into 1 and 1/2" circles.
Bake cookies 8 - 10 minutes, or until golden brown.

Yield using cookie scoop : 38 cookies

Decorated with premade (canned) butter cream icing and a variety of sprinkles.

The sweetness of the icing, counters the lack of sweetness in the sugar cookie!!! I really liked them!!