Rolo Cookies

This is one of my favorite cookies recipes.  I got it from a friend a long time ago.  I have tried a lot of different things in the middle, but Rolos and Peppermint Patties are my favorite.

The Recipe
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cups of cocoa
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. vanilla
2 1/2 – 3 cups of flour.
The Directions

This recipe will do more than one bag of Rolos, so I usually get one bag of Rolos and one bag of Peppermint Patties.  Start by unwrapping them, I usually give this job to the kiddos they LOVE it.

Once your dough is finished, take a little bit of it and flatten it out in your hand.  Then add your Rolo or Peppermint Patty to the center. Carefully cover the whole candy and roll into a ball or shape into a disc. Use enough dough that it covers the whole candy but without a lot of extra. 

Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes.

  

Let cool on pan 2 minutes and remove to a wire cooling rack.

I like to add a little melted white chocolate for a little decoration.

Cinnamon Current Swirl Bread

Yet another bread recipe.  I have mentioned how much I love making bread right?? Well I do!  This is my own recipe.

BREAD

1 cup of warm water

1 tbs yeast

1/2 cup of honey (or sugar)

3-4 cups of flour (wheat, white or a little of both, today I used both)

1 egg

1/4 cup of butter

1/2 tsp. of salt

1/2 tsp. of baking powder

1/2 tsp. of cinnamon

FILLING

1/4 cupish of butter

1/2 cup of cinnamon and sugar

1/2 cup of dried currents ( you could also use raisins)

Place the first three ingredients into your mixer.  Then add 3 cups of flour, and the rest of the ingredients. Add enough of the remaining flour that the dough starts to clean the sides of the bowl.  Mix for 2 minutes.  When it’s done let it rise until it’s doubled in size.   Punch down and dump it out onto a floured surface.  Knead the dough adding more flour (if needed) until it’s smooth and elastic. Roll out the dough into a rectangle, like you would if you were making cinnamon rolls. Spread with a thin layer of butter and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar and then with the currents.  Roll the dough up, (make it as tight of a roll as you can) like you would cinnamon rolls trying to keep the ends even.  Chopped the dough rope in half to form two loafs.  Place them in a greased loaf pan and let them rise until they are about 1 inch above the pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. Enjoy the heavenly aroma as it bakes in your oven.  Remove from pan and let cool on a cooling rack.  ENJOY!

I had little helpers today that totally squished the loafs before I could bake them, but they still turned out pretty good, and they taste divine.

*sometimes when I need to make bread and I’m in a bit of a hurry I turn my oven on and set the bowl on the oven so my bread will rise a little faster.

I’m in LOVE! With my new floor!!

We have 5 kids and a living room with basically white carpet.  Those two things just really don’t mix.  For the last 6 years we have been routinely cleaning our carpets, to try and fight the high traffic dirt AND we even bought a carpet cleaner so we wouldn’t have to rent one anymore.  (BISSEL carpet cleaners ROCK).  And on and off for the last few years we have talked about taking out the carpet and replacing it with laminate.  This past weekend we finally did… I LOVE IT!  It turned out so great and it wasn’t too much of a headache we had a couple of friends come over and help. 

Old nasty carpet with old nasty trim.

After we torn out the carpet, pad and tack strips, I spent the day repainting everything. I just repainted the same color but it made a HUGE difference. Everything looks so fresh and clean again!

And this is how it looks now. Great eh?  I wish I could have gotten pictures before they put the furniture back in, but alas I didn’t.

We replaced our old nasty trim with new taller trim, I love how that turned out too.  I kind of have a new look planned for this room, hopefully it will all come together.

New trim, I still have to do the touch up work on the trim but you get the idea.

BEFORE

AFTER

ANYONE KNOW WHERE I CAN GET A GREAT THROW RUG??? I have looked at Costco, Home Depot and even Wal*Mart, with no luck.  I need suggestions!!

Girl Scout Thinking Day–Australia

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this but I’m a Girl Scout leader.  I have a Brownie/Daisy troop.  I started doing it for my girls, they wanted to try girl scouts and I thought it could be something fun for us to do together.  And I’m so glad I did.  I love doing it!  So this year for thinking day another troop hosted an activity where troops signed up to represent a country and then we made a poster, and supplied a craft, activity or a sample of food.  Our troop  chose Australia.  These are the projects we came up with.

I got this huge poster with cut out faces so you can take pictures of yourself as a little outback boy and girl.  It was only $1.50 from Oriental Trading so I knew I had to get it. You can find it HERE (for now).

I tried to paint it, but it made it all bubbly so then I had to color it all by hand,  not the most fun thing I’ve ever done.

One  girl in our troops parents donated the wood to make a frame to hold the poster.

We used spray adhesive to attach the poster to a big piece of cardboard then I staple gunned it to the frame.

Me and two other moms made Anzac cookies. These were a little tricky this was the first time any of us had made them and we all had different little issues.  But once you sort the issues out they’re not to bad they taste kind of like an oatmeal cookie without the raisins.  I found the recipe for them on Allrecipes.  The history behind these cookies is interesting. These were sent to troops from their wives during WWI and were suppose to hold up to shipping/ spoilage better than other cookies, also they don’t contain any eggs something that could be scarce during war times.

and cupcakes for the girl scout birthday!

Sweet Potato Bread

This is my own recipe and mostly I wanted to write it down so I remember how I made it.  I love the orange color the sweet potatoes give to the bread. 

The recipe

1 cup of warm water

1/4 cup of honey

1 TBS of yeast

3 1/2 – 4 cups of bread flour

1 cup of smashed sweet potatoes

2 TBS of oil

3/4 tsp. of salt

Place ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix for 2 minutes.  Add enough flour so that the dough starts to clean the sides of the bowl.  Let it rise until it doubles. Punch it down and dump it out on a floured surface and knead it until it’s smooth and elastic.  Shape into loaf and place in a loaf pan let it rise until it’s about 1 inch above the pan and bake at 350 degrees for 30 min.

 ( I prefer to use whole wheat flour but I was out so this recipe only has white bread flour in it.)

Emma Johns is Awesome!!

I just had to take a minute an publicly thank my friend Emma for creating my new header.  Isn’t it awesome.  I love it! She is one of those people who oozes talent, and I’m a lucky person who gets to know her.  Thanks again Emma!

Why I’m a horrible person… or TALKING Valentine box.

This next project all started yesterday when my 3rd grader handed me this piece of paper from her teacher.

Challenge you say??? Well we started to brain storm my husband, my daughter and I and after about 5 minutes we came up with possibly the most obnoxious idea ever.  I was sort of worried it might be a little to obnoxious but then I read the letter again and it does say the sky’s the limit so we went for it.

We made her Valentine box TALK every time you open it. 
(Here is a video)

Can you just imagine that going off all day in a 3rd grade classroom.

And this is how we did it.

First we got an old juice pouch container, (I had just used up the last 2 that morning it was like it was fate or something)

Then we got a talking Valentines Day card at the store.  We found the perfect one!!  Sorry it was trimmed down before I could take a picture. (someone was really excited to get started)

Then I hot glued it to the top of the box so that every time you open it, it plays.  The only thing left is to decorate it and send it in tomorrow to school, hope it goes over well.   It really is obnoxious I even got tired of listening to it while I was gluing it in.

I don't know what's wrong with me :)

Valentine Dress

When I started making this dress, I wasn’t sure what it would end up looking like.  I had wanted to make my 2 year old a jumper out of this material but I couldn’t find the pattern to the top of the jumper so I improvised and made this little dress up instead without the pattern.  But I’m very happy with the end results and sometimes I still can’t believe I actually made it. It’s about size 3-4T

Ice Cream Cone Cake Pops

Jaime asked me to be a guest poster on her blog to show the cake pops I recently made for a children's church event.  I'm sure many of you have heard of Bakerella - she's famous for her cake pops.  You can find more info at:  http://www.bakerella.com/ and search for "ice cream cone cake pops". My husband got me the Bakerella cake pop book for Christmas, and when I saw these ice cream cone cake pops I had to try them out.  Here are a few pictures of how they turned out:

My husband and my kids also helped out and we had a great time making these!  They are very realistic looking.  One of the two-year-olds who had one thought it was a real ice cream cone and was licking it!

Thanks for having me on your blog, Jaime!  I LOVE all of your ideas!!

--Stephanie

Winner Winner!!

 

Congratulations to Ashley W. the big ol’ box of chocolates winner!

Thanks for playing everyone!!

Banana Cake

I was on allrecipes the other day and they had this banana cake recipe on their homepage. And since I just happened to have a lifetime supply of bananas on my countertop I thought I would give it a try.  I made it for FHE and it was a HUGE hit.  I followed the recipe exactly and the cake was moist and fluffy.  I baked mine in a bunt pan; Because I’m not a fan of icing, the only thing I did different was to serve it with vanilla pudding mixed together with 1/2 tub of cool whip and two diced bananas oh and a little caramel sauce. AWESOME.  The other cool part was that is was really easy to send the rest of the cake (just plain) in everyone’s cold lunches the next day.  I’ll be making this again…someday. 

*What’s sour milk?  I’ll I do to make sour milk is add 1 tbs. of vinegar to every 1 cup of milk used in a recipe.