Where it all began...

Apparently I make good cookies. Not just good cookies but awesome cookies. Not my words, the words of my family and friends. Don't get me wrong, I can follow a recipe. But I'm not really sure what makes them so delectible. I almost feel as though I am cheating my family, mostly my husband, out of the tastefulness of life when I make cookies from premade dough or pour them out of a box. They even have their own name: Shari Cookies. These "Shari Cookies" have become the only request of my family as Christmas presents and are a requirement at family parties. It all started Christmas 2005 when I tried to get a cookie exchange going. I made hundreds of cookies in my college apartment all by hand (I didn't yet have a mixer), in an oven that barely fit one pan. My roommate awoke to masses of baked goods covering each and every surface of our living space, save her bedroom and our tiny bathroom. I boxed them all up, well most of them, wrapped them in holiday flare, and placed them under the trees of my unsuspecting family members. With visions of sugar plums fleeing their dreams, they awoke to the sugar spender that has now become the traditional holiday staple. My goal is to get some practice this year. Not that I'm rusty. I absolutely adore baking. However, it seems as though I always go into the holiday cold, without the proper shoes, stretch and warmup. Not this year. This year I plan to outdo all the rest, which will be hard to do, for sure. And so, "The Cookie Project" was born. Each week I plan to make one type of cookie. It must be from scratch and have all the love and tenderness of warm homemade cookies and the subsidial milk, sans the slobber of my husband's spit on the spoon. So, one homemade cookie a week. This can't be good for our waistlines, but he's not complaining...

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Week Seven: Halloween!

Every year on Halloween, for the past three years, we have a Halloween brunch. We invite our immediate family and watch the Iowa Hawkeyes play. I used to make creative invitations but they have since gone by the way-side because of my busy schedule. However, I do try to make the party as creative and fun as possible for the fam. I make some signature recipes and then supplement them with fun new recipes I find in Halloween recipe books and magazines. I took some pictures of the treats on which we dined.

Candy Corn Jellies
http://jelly-shot-test-kitchen.blogspot.com/
For this recipe and others, click the link above!
Alcoholic and non!

Doughnut Dreams
Original recipe is from and Everyday with Rachel Ray
These are great. I buy Old Fashioned Sour Doughnuts from Jewel, usually two boxes because they go so quickly! You dip each doughnut in melted almond bark and let it dry on either wax paper or foil. I've made these with several diferent decorations. For Halloween this year I made ghosts with mini choco chips and pumpkins by using food coloring to make them orange and cutting mini mallows in half and dipping them in green food coloring. I have also make them into eyeballs by using a red hot and red frosting for eye veins. You can make them into pretty much anything. For my nephew's birthday I used red frosting and made some into baseballs, blue frosting to make others into volleyballs, and dipped the rest in choco almond bark and used white frosting to make footballs. The pictures will follow.

Gluten Free version of Hungry Girl's Ultimate Move Snack Mix
I am OBSESSED with the Hungry Girl website. And it is super easy to make a lot of her recipes gluten-free. Most of the recipes use Fiber One cereal to make breading. I use Chex Mix instead which is already gluten free. The recipe for this sweet mix can be found here: http://www.hungry-girl.com/biteout/show/1991
Swap out Chocolate Cheerios for Chocolate Chex cereal and it is instantly gluten free! This is really sweet and an easy spin on a traditional Chex party mix.

Not that these are recipes, but I found a great alternative use for the silicone baking cups I bought years ago. Each one had a different veggie stacked inside.

I had many other dishes, but by the time I remembered take pictures of the food, most of it was gone!!
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