Bring on 2009!

Wishing everyone a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year!!

Please be careful if you are out on the roads tonight!

I'd love to hear how you spent your new year's eve and what you were doing when the new year rolled in!

We are sitting here waiting for the ball to drop. I can't wait to sleep in tomorrow! ;)

See ya in 2009!
Tami

Our Christmas Cookies

My kids and I had a good time making Christmas cookies this year. Both of the kids were a big help--even though if it were left up to my daughter, she would eat them in dough form and skip the baking!


Santa cleaned his plate, too, and drank all of his milk!

Thanks to my Mom and my new mixer, the cookies were a breeze to mix up this year. Here they are from left to right:

Across Top: My soft sour cream sugar cookies

Bottom Left: chocolate chocolate chip cookies

Next to choc. choc. chip: "cleaning out the kitchen cookies"

Right side below sugar cookies- TWD sugar Cookies covered in cinnamon sugar

Right side bottom - My mil's soft oatmeal raisin cookies

The recipes:

Tami's Soft Sour Cream Sugar Cookies

1/2c. shortening(part butter or margarine)

1c. sugar

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla

2 2/3c. flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1/2 sour cream

Heat oven to 425 degrees

Mix shortening, sugar, egg, & vanilla thoroughly.

Blend dry ingredients.

Add to sugar mixture alternately with sour cream.

Divide dough, roll out on a well-floured board. Cut with cookie cutters (metal cookie cutters w/ open tops are the easiest). You can make these as thick as you want...the thicker, the chewier.

Place cookies on greased baking sheets. Sprinkle with sugar unless you are going to ice them. Bake 7-8 min or until very lightly browned.

The Chocolate Chocolate Chip cookies can be found here. I've written about them already and they've become a favorite at our house.

"Cleaning out the kitchen cookies" come about when I have bits and pieces of things left over from other recipes. For example, in this recipe I used chocolate chips, peanut butter chips and crushed pecans. I've used coconut, almonds, mint choc. chips...whatever I have leftover that I think will tasted good when stir together. For the dough, I used a recipe from Five Forks

She posts about the ultimate chocolate chip cookie--and I think that she's absolutely right! This recipe is delicious!! Instead of using all of the chocolate chips that the recipe calls for, I divided up my ingredients into equal amts. I used my small cookie scoop instead of rolling the cookie dough into balls. These cookies are so good because they don't go flat when you bake them and they stay chewy! She has posted beautiful pics of the cookies on her blog.

The TWD Sugar Cookies can been found here. I had leftover dough so I rolled them into logs and stuck them in the freezer. I layed them on the table for about 5 minutes before I sliced them into circles, and then I dipped them into a cinnamon/sugar mixture and baked them. To me, they tasted better this way but I'm still not really crazy about this recipe. The dough was too much of a hassle for me to worry about. I'm totally biased toward sugar cookie recipes because I LOVE my recipe above.

Aud's Soft Oatmeal Raisin Cookies - if you like "dunking" cookies, you have to try these!

Here is the recipe:

½ c. sour milk ( ½ c milk with 1 & ½ tsp vinegar)

2 c. shortening

2 c. sugar

4 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

½ tsp. salt

2 tsp. baking soda

2 c. raisins

4 c. flour

5 c rolled oats

Cover raisins with boiling water and let sit to soften ; drain well.

Blend shortening and sugar ; add eggs, one at a time; add vanilla & salt, mix thoroughly. Add raisins to dry mix. Dissolve soda in milk. Add flour alternately with milk. Add rolled oats

Bake at 375 degrees 12-15 minutes or until light brown

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of my blogger friends!!

Thanks Mom!

Look what my Mom gave to me when we were in PA to visit her!


She's this itty bitty little lady - not even 100 lbs soaking wet- and it took all she could do to move it around. She said that she knows how much I love to cook and bake so she asked me if I wanted it!! UH...YES!!!

You see...sadly (lol!) I am not an itty bitty little thing so I have no problem moving it around and I have been giving it a work out! It's gonna get a workout later today when I start on my Christmas cookies and other goodies, too!

Mom is a happy baker once again, too. She wanted a Sunbeam MixMaster so we bought her one so that she could bake her Christmas cookies! :) She told me tonight that she is thrilled with her new mixer.

LET'S BAKE!!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Pumpkin Eggnog Bundt Cake

I made this pretty bundt cake a couple of weeks ago but I never got around to posting it until now. The cake is super easy to make - it would make a wonderful gift for Christmas.

You need:

1 box yellow cake mix
1 -4 serving- pkg. vanilla instant pudding & pie filling
1/4 C. pumpkin eggnog
1/4 C. vegetable oil
4 eggs
4 tsps. pumpkin pie spice
powdered sugar to sprinkle on top -optional



What you do:

Preheat oven to 350*

In a large bowl, mix together cake mix, pudding, eggnog and oil on low speed until moistened. Add eggs and pumpkin pie spice and beat on medium-high for 4 minutes.

Pour batter into a greased and floured bundt pan.

Bake 35 - 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Cool in pan for 10 minutes. Remove cake from pan to a cooling rack to cool completely. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, if desired.