Category Archives: Baking & Cooking

Christmas Sugar Cookies – Recipe

Every year I make a sugar cookie for Christmas but I usually cheat and buy a pre-made dough mix. Not this year. Nope. I was going to bake from scratch and these Christmas sugar cookies turned out delicious and pretty as they held their cut-out shape.

Christmas Sugar Cookie

 

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups butter, softened

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

5 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

 

Directions

In a mixer, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Remove dough from the mixing bowl and place on plastic wrap in a ball. Chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Roll out 1/4 of the dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on greased cookie sheets.

Bake 8-10 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

Christmas Sugar Cookie

 

Tip: The longer the dough chills, the better. Only work with 1/4 of the batter at a time to prevent it from becoming room temperature which causes the dough to be sticky. I also roll out the dough in between two pieces of parchment paper to avoid additional flour getting on top of the cookie dough. These cookies are soft so if you prefer your sugar cookies a bit crisper, leave them in the oven a minute longer.

 

These Christmas sugar cookies are ready to decorate for Santa!

Christmas Chocolate Peppermint Cookies – Recipe

Five years ago I found a recipe for chocolate peppermint cookies and now, it just isn’t Christmas without them. When friends and family begin dropping hints as to when the chocolate peppermint cookies are making an appearance, it’s time to type out the original printed recipe that has been floating in a kitchen drawer for years.

Christmas Chocolate Peppermint Cookie

Ingredients

Cookies:
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup packed light brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups chocolate chips

Glaze:
3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
2 drops mint extract, or more to taste
3 1/2 teaspoons water

Directions
For the cookies:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.In a medium bowl sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside. In a mixer beat together the butter with the sugars until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating until smooth after each addition and scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary. Add in the vanilla. On a low speed beat in the flour mixture a little at a time. Gently mix in chocolate chips.On an ungreased cookie sheet and using a cookie scoop, drop batter about 2 inches apart. Bake until just cracked on top, about 8 to 10 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through the cooking time. Cool completely.

 

For the glaze:
In a small bowl mix together the sugar; mint extract and water until smooth. Transfer mixture to a medium resealable plastic bag and snip off the corner. Drizzle glaze over cooled cookies and sprinkle crushed candy canes on top. Let cookies stand until set for 1 hour.

Each recipe yields roughly 50 cookies.

Christmas Chocolate Peppermint Cookie

 

Tip: Don’t double the recipe because this batter is thick. And watch out because your friends and family will definitely want these each year! Make a few for Santa and you’ll go straight to the top of the Nice List!

Enjoy!

Gender Reveal Party for Baby Minch

When I found out I was going to be Auntie Meagan,  I was over-the-moon excited for my dear friends, Jon and Katie!

Gender Reveal Party

Katie is amazing at party planning and DIY-ing details – a girl after my own heart! One weekend we shopped til we dropped and it was time to start crafting for Baby Minch’s Gender Reveal Party. Being the tissue paper tassel queen, I stepped right up to the plate and starting tassel-ing weeks in advance. After two failed Martha Stewart fringe cutters, I went back to the old school method of using a single paper cutter. (C’mon Martha!)

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One of the ideas I suggested was to have everyone bring a pack of diapers to the party. This is the only baby event where gifts aren’t typically given to the mommy and baby so why not start a diaper stockpile early on? Katie ran with the idea and held a prize raffle for all those that brought Baby Minch diapers.

Once decorations and games were planned for, it was time to start planning just how the gender was going to be revealed! Katie and Jon wanted to incorporate cupcakes (YAY!) and they wanted me to bake them (YAY! YAY!)

One of the coolest things about being an event planner is the secrets I’m trusted to keep. Katie and Jon secretly told me the gender of their baby two days before their Gender Reveal Party and I even kept the secret from Sean! They wanted me to put colored icing in only two of the cupcakes and fill the rest with white. The day of the party my kitchen was taken over by the lovely smell of four dozen classic yellow cupcakes baking in the oven. It was heavenly!

I cored each cupcake with a cupcake plunger (an amazing little gadget!) and filled each cupcake with my famous buttercream recipe. I promise to share it soon! Once the cupcakes were iced, there was no way of telling which was filled with white or colored icing.

Gender Reveal Party

How stinkin’ cute did the cupcakes turn out?

Gender Reveal Party

The party details turned out ah-dorable!

Gender Reveal Party

And what did the Grand Reveal cupcake tells us? Baseballs or Bows? …Baby Minch is a BOY!!!

Gender Reveal Party

I set up my point-and-shoot camera on the tripod just to record this special moment candidly for Jon and Katie. It’s precious – especially the moment of confusion when everyone bit into white icing!

This Auntie is SUPER excited to start planning Katie’s baby shower this summer!

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YAY for Jon, Katie, and Baby Boy Minch!