Best Cookie Recipe....Ever

Try to not take a bite out of your computer screen right now.

I have been making this recipe for years and have always been told how great the cookies are.  They ALWAYS turn out great.  And the base recipe works with SO many add-ins that I can turn make all sorts of flavors with the same recipe.  So now for the BIG secret...I use, have always used and will always use 100% whole wheat flour in these cookies.  People say that's what makes them so good.

Here's the recipe along with how I make them and some ideas for changing them up a bit...

2 sticks of butter
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar

Blend butter in a stand mixer and then add the sugar to the bowl.

2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

I add the previous ingredients in that order to the bowl and when it's all mixed well together, this is your cookie base.

Now for your options...

1 bag chocolate chips with or without chopped nuts
1 bag white chocolate chips with chopped macadamia nuts
1 bag butterscotch chips
1 bag crushed toffee chips with crushed walnuts
I have substituted almond extract or peppermint extract for the vanilla (not 1 for 1, less of the almond or peppermint, they seem to be stronger)
Finely crushed candy canes
Raisins
Dried cranberries with crushed almonds

I use a medium scoop from the Pampered Chef (not sure exactly what size that is, but it makes the perfect sized cookies) and bake them on a Pampered Chef stone for 10 minutes at 400 degrees.  The second and third batch I cook for 9 minutes since the stone is still hot.  I let them cool for about 10 minutes before taking them off the stone to cool completely.

This recipe usually makes about 3 dozen as long as you don't eat too much of the dough!

Advent and Children's Crafts

Last Sunday after we had returned from our Thanksgiving adventures and after my 10 year class reunion, we spent the evening at our church for the annual Advent Festival and the decorating of the sanctuary with greens.  This year's crafts were so cute and most could be easily done at home if you are looking for ways to make some homemade Christmas decor with your kids.  The only one I didn't get a picture of are the Cinnamon Cookie Cutter Ornaments, which of course are the ones I prepared ahead of time.  But I do want to share how to make them because they are really easy and smell so amazing because of all of the cinnamon.  Here is the recipe:

1 Cup Applesauce

1 1/2 Cups Cinnamon

1/3 Cup Nontoxic White Glue

Mix together and roll into ball.  Refrigerate at least 30 minutes or overnight.  Roll out dough and cut out shapes of about 1/4 inch thickness.  Make sure to punch at the top to use to hang them.  Leave the cut out shapes on the counter to dry for a few days and then when completely dried, decorate them.  This recipe makes 30 ornaments, but if you wanted to try this at home, you could easily half, third or quarter this recipe to make many less.

First all the kids decorated their own bags that they used to carry around all of their beautiful art.

 Our first stop with at the table with the bells.  The girls (with Mimi and my help) strung bells onto pipe cleaners.  Then we just looped the pipe cleaner into a circle and tied a ribbon on.  This can be put on a doorknob or hung on the tree or like my girls do, just played with.

 Next stop was to the ice cream cone station.  Not REAL ice cream.  These are made of glass and glue and are meant to be hung on the Christmas tree!  Doesn't sound very much like Christmas, but read this story.  These could easily be made at home if you have a spare sugar cone, a glass ornament ball, some glue or paint that dries white (not clear) and some sprinkles.  Most of these things you probably have around the house.  Make the cone and share the story of the Ice Cream Prayer.

 We made our way over to another craft using pipe cleaners.  These seem to be very multi-purpose and fun for little hands to explore.  This one involved strining a pipe cleaner with red and white beads to form a candy cane.  Magnolia tackled hers all by herself.  It went along with the book The Legend of the Candy Cane (see below).

This one is super easy and smells sooo good.  Take a clementine, poke holes with a toothpick (or not, if you have tough fingers) and stick in a whole clove.  Done.  Tie with a ribbon if you want to hang if from your tree.  Of make a dozen of them and set them in a bowl as decoration.  A friend has some from a few years ago and swears they still smell great and are now dried out and preserved.

 This is my favorite picture of the night...that tongue kills me!

Then the girls played with a Little People Nativity for awhile.

Boothe got a mohawk from a friend of mine's son.  Maybe this was just his way of flirting.

They looked at all of their newly crafted goodies and then it was time to go have pizza, decorate cookies and hot chocolate!                        

10 Year Reunion

Last Saturday after the Thanksgiving holiday (which I'm still going through the pictures), our graduating class had our first reunion.  It was great seeing everyone, and it seemed like we had a good turnout with probably somewhere between 100-150 people coming...but that's out of the 750ish we graduated with.

I had a few close friends over to the house before hand to see those girls a little longer.

Weird it's been 10 years already.  Everyone looked the same and pretty much acted the same (!), but there were spouses there and kids to talk about so that made the 10 year time span seem a bit more real.