Sour Cream Cut-Out Cookies

Here's the recipe as promised for the Sour Cream Cookies the kids always make at Christmastime.

Note: The dough rolls out better if made the day before and refrigerated overnight, or at least chilled for a few hours before rolling out.

Sour Cream Cut-Out Cookies:

Ingredients-

1 3/4 cup Sugar
4 1/2 - 5 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup shortening
1 cup thick sour cream (regular not light or fat free)

Directions-

Mix all together well and chill in refrigerator. This may be dropped by spoonfuls or rolled out and used for cut-outs. We always roll out. Don't roll too thin thought. They burn easier that way.

Bake at 325 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Cool on rack.

These cookies are so good we never frost them, but in case you want to here's a frosting recipe below. Also, we have colored the dough with food coloring and make candy canes. Example- Red & Green dough rolled in strips then twisted together & shaped like a candy cane.

Frosting:
1 cup powdered sugar
1 Tblsp water
1/2 tsp almond or vanilla

ENJOY!!!!

Santa Cookies

I know I need to get this blog caught up and hopefully over the next couple days I can. In the meantime to update you a little, I made my Santa cookies on Thursday so I'm posting the recipe. Maybe you've got nothing to do this last week before Christmas and will want to make them! It's really not like you need a recipe for these because by looking at them you can pretty much figure out how to make these. However, for the sake of this blog, I'm posting a recipe so you can find it under "cookies" with all the other recipes and you'll know how to make these cute Santa cookies. There's minimal ingredients and just a few steps to complete these Santa cookies. Here's a pic of the Santa cookies. Aren't they adorable?


Ingredients:

1 Package of Nutter Butter Cookies
1 Package Vanilla Candiquik
Red sugar sprinkles
White morsels
Mini red M&M's
Mini chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Melt half package of the Candiquik and dip one end of Nutter Butters (to resemble beard) and set aside until Candiquik hardens.
2. After step one is complete, melt other half of Candiquik and dip other end of Nutter Butters (to resemble Santa hat), sprinkle with red sugar sprinkles leaving a little bit of white showing for hat fur, top with one white morsel.
3. Top with two mini chocolate morsels to resemble eyes, and one mini red M&M to resemble nose (Use a little dab of the melted Candiquik to apply the eyes & nose). Let set until hardened.

Notes: It's helpful to have an extra hand when sprinkling hats and doing the eyes & nose because you have to work quickly before your melted Candiquik hardens. It's doable by yourself, but an extra hand doesn't hurt. By the time you get to the end of doing the eyes and nose you can remelt the Candiquik, but not too much or it will end up burned. Also, I have in the past used cinnamon red hots for the nose and black decorating gel for the eyes. My kids prefer the M&M's so I've switched to using those. Also, you'll see in the picture I made some with green Santa hats. I actually ran out of red sprinkles so had to switch to green. It worked out good though because I called them my Spartan Santa cookies!

Cherry 'Mallow Cookies

As promised here's the recipe for the Cherry 'Mallow Cookies I made yesterday. I discovered this recipe in an email I got from Better Homes and Garden. I thought they looked too cute and sounded too yummy to pass up.

Ingredients

• 16 maraschino cherries with stems
• 1/3 cup marshmallow creme
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped maraschino cherries
• 32 vanilla wafer cookies
• 4 ounces vanilla-flavor candy coating ( I used the Candiquik you can find at Meijer)
  

Directions

1. Place maraschino cherries with stems on paper towels; drain well. Line a baking sheet with waxed paper; set aside. In a small bowl, stir together marshmallow creme and chopped maraschino cherries. Spread about 1 teaspoon of the maraschino cherry mixture on the bottom of one cookie. Top with another cookie, bottom side down. Place on prepared baking sheet. Repeat with remaining cookies and maraschino cherry mixture.

2. In a small saucepan, heat and stir candy coating over medium-low heat until melted and smooth. Cool slightly. ( I just melted the Candiquik in the microwave)

3. Dip cookies halfway into the melted candy coating. Return to baking sheet. Holding a cherry by the stem, dip bottom of cherry into the melted candy coating. Place cherry on top of candy-coated side of one cookie. Hold for several seconds or just until set. Repeat with remaining cherries and cookies. Let cookies stand until candy coating sets. Makes 16 sandwich cookies.

TO STORE: Place sandwich cookies in a single layer in an airtight container; cover. Store in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.

Here's the finished product! Don't they look yummy?

I actually doubled the recipe because I was planning to give some of these out to neighbors and 16 cookies didn't seem like enough. However, there's only one problem I discovered. I apparently missed the "TO STORE" section of the recipe and didn't see that they are supposed to be refrigerated for up to two days. When we opened the container tonight the filling got a little runny from not storing in the fridge. They still tasted fine, but just a little messy. Also, I see why the recipe only makes 16 cookies because you're only supposed to refrigerate them for up to two day. All in all though they're a fast and easy cookie to make and taste delicious.

Holiday Snowball Cookie Recipe

Here's the cookie recipe I promised you yesterday. They really are not hard to make at all!

Holiday Snowball Cookies

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups butter, softened (3 sticks) Make sure softened!
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 Tbsp vanilla
1/2 tsp. salt
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 2/3 cups Nestles Toll House Swirled Holiday Morsels (10 oz. pkg)
1/2 cup finely chopped nuts (I use pecans)
Powdered sugar

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

1. Beat butter, sugar, vanilla, and salt in large mixing bowl until creamy.
2. Gradually beat in flour.
3. Stir in morsels and nuts.
4. Shape into 1 1/4 inch balls. (I use a cookie dough scoop)
5. Place on ungreased (or parchment paper) baking sheets.
6. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until cookies are set and lightly browned.
7. Remove from oven and sift powdered sugar over hot cookies.
8. Cool on baking sheets for 10 minutes and then move to wire racks. Sprinkle with additional powdered sugar if desired.

Makes 40-45 snowballs.

I got this recipe from a Nestle Toll House recipe card and it says makes 4 1/2 dozen. It depends on the size of your scoop I guess because I've never gotten that many out of a batch. Probably if you just do spoonfuls you may, but I like the scoop because it makes cookie into a good shape. I have been making these cookies for years. They're always a hit! Enjoy!

The Christmas Baking Continues...

Yesterday I wrapped some more presents and went to the store to get the missing ingredients I didn't have for my baking. Greg helped me out last night by doing step one of my peanut butter patty cookies so that was greatly appreciated. Today I went to town and got a lot of my baking done. First up was more pretzel buttons. Evan got in on the action today and helped me with those. He was such a hoot as we made them. The things he was saying cracked me up. I'll tell you some of them along the way. He was so excited to help so we started by peeling all the wrappers from the Hugs. That's probably the only bad part about making the pretzel buttons, but with Evan's help it went really fast. At first Evan says, "Unwrapping these is more fun than eating them." I was a little shocked by that, but about a minute later he says, "Mommy, touching this candy makes me want to eat them." I think this was his start to many lines to come in order to try to get some to eat. We unwrapped two bags of Hugs and as we neared the end there was a broken one. I gave the broken piece to Evan and he says, "These babies are soooo good." My response, "No Evan you're not having more." He was trying everything to eat the Hugs, believe me! Once we got the Hugs unwrapped Evan was a super big helper spreading the pretzels out and topping them with the Hugs. I put the M&M's on because that part kind of needs to be done fast. We ended up making about 160 pretzel buttons which makes a total of about 225 all together because I made about 65 the other day.

Next up was my peanut butter patties. About 10 years ago when I was doing a long term substitute teaching job in Grand Rapids, a teacher made these for the Christmas party and I was hooked. I've been making them ever since. They taste like the Girl Scout peanut butter patties, but after having them together I think these taste even better. They are so easy to make as well. Three ingredients once again... here's the recipe:

Peanut Butter Patties

Ingredients:

• 1 package chocolate Candi-quick ( I think the Meijer brand tastes best)
• Ritz crackers (about 60 if use a whole package of Candi-quick)
• peanut butter

Directions:

1. Peanut butter the bottom side of a Ritz cracker, top with a second Ritz cracker (so both bottom sides of crackers are touching the peanut butter and you basically have two Ritz crackers with peanut butter in the middle- ).
   
2. Melt Candi-quick according to package directions.
3. Dip cracker in Candi-quick so completely covered.
4. Set on wax paper to harden.

Makes about 30 cookies.

You kind of have to work fast before the Candi-quick hardens. You may need to put tray of chocolate back in the microwave to soften as you're making this. I only do in 15 second intervals because after a couple times the chocolate can tend to get clumpy. Here's what they look like. I basically whip the chocolate on so they're not the prettiest cookie with smooth chocolate like the Girl Scout peanut butter patties, but they're soooo good!


The pretzels in the middle are Evan's own concoction. We had some pretzels left over from the "buttons" and a little chocolate from the cookies. He wanted to dip the pretzels and put teddy grahams in the middle. Pretty clever, huh? He had to make one for each of us! He also made a couple "buttons" with the Hug in the middle and a teddy graham on top instead of the M&M's.

I had to take a break from baking until this evening because I forgot the margarine had to soften for my "Holiday Snowball Cookies." I wasn't going to make these this year, but Greg requested them and I had a bag of the holiday morsels so I made them. I forgot that these too are pretty easy to make. A few more steps than the "pretzel buttons" and "peanut butter patties," but not too bad nonetheless. Here's what they look like:


I will post the recipe tomorrow for them. Because I'm tired and ready for bed soon. I was lucky to get the dough made for these because just as I finished mixing my hand mixer when on the fritz and pretty much burned up. Santa, I need a new hand mixer! So overall, I made 160 pretzel buttons, 31 peanut butter patties, and 43 holiday snowball cookies today. I don't think I'm done because I will probably make another batch of the peanut butter patties as they're being requested. I'm also still debating about making my Santa cookies. I usually make chocolate and white chocolate dipped pretzel rods, but since I discovered the pretzel buttons I think those are going to win over the pretzel rods from now on! Before I leave you, here's a picture of what the Candi-quick looks like if you're unfamiliar with Candi-quick and the holiday morsels for the snowball cookies. (Just a FYI- these can be hard to find sometimes so if you see them grab them. I usually see them at Meijer, but the closer to Christmas it gets they run out.)