ABCs & 123s - Cookies for Teacher Appreciation Week

Teacher Appreciation week is May 3-9 this year.

Looking for something fun and tasty to give to your favorite teacher? Bake a batch of these cinnamon sugar cookies to say "Thank You" for all of their hard work.


What You Need

1/2 cup shortening (part butter or margarine)
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
2 2/3 cup flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup sour cream


What You Do

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. 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 lightly greased baking sheets. Bake 6-7 minutes or until very lightly browned around the edges. Remove to cooling racks to cool completely before icing.


Choose The Right Icing:
If you are planning on eating the cookies immediately and not storing them, you can frost them with confectioner's sugar icing. This quick and easy icing will harden slightly once it's on the cookies but will not harden enough to stack the cookies without ruining the designs on your cookies.


Confectioner's Sugar Icing:

2 cups powdered sugar
2 TBSP water
1/4 tsp. of flavored extract such as vanilla (optional). Make sure to use clear extract because any color will tint the icing.

If you are planning on packing the cookies in containers, I would recommend using this Royal Icing recipe. It takes a bit more work in the beginning but the end results are quite worth it when the cookies keep their "freshly made" appearance. This icing will harden to allow stacking in containers without ruining any of the cookie's designs.

Royal Icing:

1 1/2 TBSP meringue powder
2 cups sifted icing sugar
3 tablespoons cold water

Mix on low with a hand mixer for 10 minutes.


Decorating Cookies:
Divide icing into 3 bowls. Tint one bowl of icing green, one bowl red and one bowl blue. Decorate cookies and give ample time to air dry.

Freezing Cookies:
Line a baking sheet with wax paper, then lay cookies in a single layer onto the paper. Freeze. Once frozen, the cookies can be stacked on top of each other. To thaw, place cookies in a single layer on a baking sheet or plate-do not thaw cookies while they are stacked together or the icing will stick to the other cookies.

Thrifty Thursday - my magazine craze

Ok, I admit it...To go along with my cookbook addiction, I'm addicted to collecting and reading magazines! Very rarely do I ever purchase a subscription to any magazine. Instead, I buy them at thrift stores and yard sales or once in a while I will get lucky and find some that someone has listed on Craigslist or FreeCycle for free.

My husband and I went hunting through our local Habitat for Humanity Restore today. I love wandering around places like that. I didn't find anything that I was looking for but I did get a great deal on 6 Southern Living magazines that are filled with recipes and decorating ideas that I can't wait to try. :)



I only paid $1.00 for all of them!


Magazines and good deals....that makes me happy!!!

This is my Thrifty Thursday deal of the week.


Here are more great Thrifty Thursday bloggings.

Earth Day Globe Cookies

Going green is an important lesson to teach the next generation. What a great way to share the importance of keeping our planet green by making these sweet Earth cookies together.


What You Need

1 1/2 C. white sugar
1 1/2 C. brown sugar
3/4 C. butter, softened but not melted
3/4 C. butter flavored shortening
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
3 C. flour
4 1/2 C. regular (not quick cooking!) oatmeal
1 1/2 C. white chocolate chips (optional)
can add nuts if desired


What You Do

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Cream together both sugars, butter, and shortening. Beat in eggs, one at a time, then add vanilla and mix well. Combine soda, cinnamon, baking powder, salt, and flour. Add slowly to the butter and sugar mixture making sure to mix well. Stir in oatmeal, and then add chocolate chips at the end.

Drop by scant 1/4 C. onto cookie sheet, leaving some room in-between cookies for the cookies to spread during baking.

Bake for 8-10 minutes or until light brown. Do not over bake if chewy cookies are desired. Immediately remove from the cookie sheet to a cooling rack.

Once cookies have completely cooled, frost with royal icing* to look like planet Earth.

Royal Icing

4 egg whites
4 C. sifted confectioners' sugar
1 tsp. clear vanilla extract


Beat egg whites in clean, large bowl with mixer at high speed until foamy. Gradually add sugar and clear vanilla extract. Beat at high speed until thickened. If you desire a thicker icing, slowly add more confectioner's sugar until you reached your desired consistency.

For "Earth" cookies you will need:

blue paste food coloring
green paste food coloring
3 Ziploc baggies or icing bags

Divide the icing into: 1/2 to color blue, 1/4 to color green and 1/4 white. Fill in green for land, blue for water and use the white to outline the land.

Let the cookies dry completely before stacking in containers.


More fun Earth Day kids' recipes.
More fun Earth Day craft and other ideas.

Hamburger Stroganoff

I needed a quick meal that included hamburger in the ingredients since that is what I had in our freezer that needed to be cooked. I didn't have enough hamburger for burgers and I wasn't in the mood for tacos, so I decided to search for something else. I finally decided on hamburger stroganoff. I didn't want to use cream-of-anything soup in it. After searching for a while, I decided to make up my own recipe. It was a really big hit with my family. YAY!

Hamburger Stroganoff
1 1/2 lb. hamburger
2 small cans of mushrooms, drained well OR
8 oz of sliced, fresh mushrooms - I would've used
fresh but I didn't have any on hand so I just used
canned.
onion powder to taste- again, I would've used diced onion
but my daughter hates onions and since she has a
mouthful of missing teeth, I wanted her to enjoy
eating without complaining all the way through
dinner. The onion powder did the trick.
garlic powder to taste
red pepper flakes (optional)
2 small cans of beef broth
cornstarch
Gravy Master
1/4 - 1/2 C. sour cream
1- 12 oz. bag of wide egg noodles, cooked and kept warm

Brown the hamburger and mushrooms together in a large frying pan. Drain off any excess fat, and then return the mixture to the frying pan.

Stir in 2 tsp. each of onion powder and garlic powder and 1 tsp. of red pepper flakes.

Pour in beef broth. Bring to a boil over medium heat.

Make a slightly thickened paste of cornstarch and 1/2 C. water - I didn't measure the cornstarch, I just kept adding it to the water until it was the consistency that I wanted. Slowly stir this mixture into the boiling broth until a gravy forms. You might not need to add the entire 1/2 C. of thickener.

Stir in 2 TBSP of Gravy Master.

At this point you need to do a taste test to see if you need to add more onion powder, garlic powder, red pepper flakes and/ or Gravy Master. I added a bit more of all of the above. Add it to your liking.

Cooking for 5 - 10 minutes to heat through.

Add egg noodles and stir together well. Stir in 1/4 - 1/2 C. sour cream, depending on your preference. I'm the only one who really likes sour cream so I only added 1/4 C. to ours....ssshhhh! I didn't tell them that it was in there.

Serve immediately. Crusty bread goes great with it!

Guest Hosting Bookmarked Recipes #50

Here’s this week's round up of Bookmarked Recipes and this week we have some more great recipes from some more great bloggers. This week’s round up is being hosted by me... Tami of Tami's Kitchen Table Talk.



I'll start off this week's round up with an old time favorite, Original Rice Krispies Treats, from the Kellogg's Rice Krispies website. Wanna bite?



Next up we have Arika of My Yummy Life. She's made Nanaimo Bars from Dishing Up Delights. Don't they look delicious?!?



City Girl of City Girl Lifestyle sent us her version of Spicy Red Rice. She bookmarked the recipe from the May 2009 issue of Real Simple Magazine. She sent us the online link for it, too. Looks really good!



Deeba from Passionate About Baking sent in this beautiful dish that she calls Getting My Herbs Right with Chicken and Pasta. She combined two bookmarked recipes to create this dish. The first recipe is from an old blogging friend, Val at More Than Burnt Toast & the second is from a new blogging friend, Bron, at Bron Marshall. My mouth is watering over this one!


Amanda from Amanda's Cookin' sent in Sesame Chicken. She bookmarked this delicious recipe from You Tube. Somebody hand me a fork, I want to dig right in!



Thanks everyone for your submissions!!! It's always exciting to see what people have been making and recreating as well as meeting some new bloggers.

Next week’s round up will be hosted by Ben of What's Cooking.

That's it for this week. Remember if you want to take part here's all you have to do....
1. Pick a recipe from a book/magazine/blog/website/tv show and make it. (Note you can only submit 1 recipe per week)
2. Blog about it
- include where you got the recipe in your blog post (including a link to their website if possible)
- include a link to this post or this blog in your blog post
- include the logo (see above) for Bookmarked Recipes in your blog post
- include a photo of your recreation on your blog post
3. Email bookmarkedrecipes[AT]gmail[DOT]com with the following information:
- Your name
- The name of your blog
- The URL of your blog
- The permalink for your entry
- A photo of your entry
- A note of where you got your recipe from