Sacred Heart and Immaculate Heart Cookies

On the Feast of the Sacred Heart, the kids decorated cookies and then we enjoyed some time at the park before dinner. It has not been nearly as hot as June usually is here and we are enjoying our outdoor time. (Hence the lack of blogging!)

 We are always inspired by Jessica. My kids had so much fun decorating these cookies based on her Catholic Cuisine post. They want to try a cookie story quilt next!

St. Blaise's Feast Day

It looks like I'm battling mastitis right now so the girls made these cookies for their brothers today to celebrate St. Blaise's Day.

 They have taken over the baby, the kitchen, the laundry, everything to let me rest. Oh how I love these big girls of mine.

 

Christmas Cracker Cookies

I wanted to post this recipe here to that we can find it easily later. We made these cookies on Christmas Eve and it was so easy, the girls did mostly everything themselves. We played with different toppings... crushed candy canes, white non-pareils, toasted almond and mini-chocolate chips, marshmallows and sprinkles, so we opted to give them a new name. They were all good!

Christmas Cracker Cookies

8 - 10 graham crackers separated into individual pieces
12 oz - milk chocolate almond bark (half of a 24 oz block)

toppings:
crushed candy canes, mini-chocolate chips, chopped nuts, sprinkles, etc...

Line cookie sheets with parchment paper or waxed paper. Melt chocolate according to directions. Dip one piece of graham cracker into melted chocolate. Using a fork, lift cracker out of chocolate and gently shake to allow excess to drip off. Place cracker on parchment paper and sprinkle with topping. Allow the chocolate to firm up again and enjoy!

 

Masks

These turned out better than we ever expected and were so much fun to make! Can you guess who made which one? Hint: I made one for myself and one for Husband. The children each made their own.

You'll find more information and more pictures on our cookies masks over at Catholic Cuisine. 

 

A Coloring Page and a Cookie Craft

Coloring page here and...

a Cookie Craft!

Pirouette cookies tied together with a Twizzler strand and topped with a diagonally cut marshmallow with the cut side dipped in orange colored sugar and stuck on with melted white chocolate. These took me 5 minutes to put together and the kids love them.

Happy Feast of St. Blaise!

Virtual Cookie Exchange II

They might not pretty but neither was a manger full of hay...

... until it was blessed by a Child.

Haystacks

1  12oz. bag chow mein noodles

1 C. peanut butter

2 C. butterscotch chips

1 C. salted peanuts (opt.)

Melt butterscotch and peanut butter together in microwave or stovetop. Pour melted mixture over peanuts and noodles in a large bowl. Stir until coated. Drop by teaspoon fulls onto waxed paper. Cool or chill until set. Super messy but super fun for the kids to make by themselves.

Find more delicious recipes at Catholic Cuisine!

Virtual Cookie Exchange

We have more to make tomorrow but here is some of what we have made today...

Christmas Mints

3 oz. cream cheese

2 1/2 C. powdered sugar

1/2 tsp. mint extract

1/4 tsp. water (if needed)

sugar sprinkles for rolling in

Mix the cream cheese and powdered sugar together. Add extract and water if needed to make the mixture pull together into a ball. Roll out marble sized portions and roll in decorative sugar sprinkles. 

We added green food coloring to half of our batch for some color but ultimately decided that we liked the look of the white mints in colored sprinkles better. Although, with enough green ones, you could make your own minty Christmas tree!

My giggly girls!

Find more delicious recipes at Catholic Cuisine!

Easy Biscotti

I have a beloved biscotti recipe that I use as a base for making those toasty logs of deliciousness we usually give to family and friends at Christmas. Husband's family is full of some serious coffee lovers and what goes better with coffee than biscotti? Now that recipe is a bit involved as super secret family treasures usually are and calls for all kinds of special ingredients but it's my favorite. This recipe that I linked to yesterday looked like a simple, basic recipe that I could whip up with things I had in the house but I didn't expect it to be as good as my unrivaled favorite.

Let's just say... when baking biscotti is as easy as this and turns out as tasty, why wait for Christmas? (Not that my other recipe is in danger of being replaced or anything, but this one whips up so quickly.)

Another discovery... spoons for cappuccino mousse become irrelevant when you have biscotti to dip.



P.S. My alterations to the recipe: Instead of 1 Tbl. of anise extract, I used 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla and 1 1/2 tsp. almond extract. I also added chopped almonds.

The Evolution of a Cookie

(in pictures)

(The boys took charge of the sprinkles but I wasn't fast enough to snap a picture.)

Celebrating the Triumph of the Cross

We adore You, O Christ,
and we praise You,
because by Your Holy Cross
You have redeemed the world.

On the old calendar, there were two separate feasts honoring the True Cross of Our Lord. May 3 was celebrated as the Finding of the Holy Cross and September 14th was celebrated as the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. As that first link indicates, the two feasts were combined into today, so we celebrated accordingly.

HT : Dawn

Delicious cookies

Craft stick crosses
(The wet weather kept my frosting from drying out enough to wrap them up, so we made these craft stick crosses and played St. Helena's Hunt for the True Cross this afternoon.)

Triumph of the Cross Cookie Hunt

Over at Catholic Cuisine...