Bobo Making Cookies

I'm a little obsessed with pre-sliced frozen holiday sugar cookies... they're just so easy, tasty and cute!  They used to have three different holiday designs for the whole year, and now they've caught on and made a ton, for every holiday.  I'm surprised they didn't have Martin Luther King Jr. ones.  The sad thing is, I will buy any new holiday design they come up with!

I've shared my love of these cookies with Bobo, and HE loves them because these are one thing that he can 'make' all by himself!  He gets so excited when he sees these because during Christmas he got to make them for the first time.  I didn't even finish unpacking the groceries when he grabbed them, began dancing around, and telling me he had to 'make cookies' right away.  Who could resist that?

After someone opens the bag for him, and slides out the tray, he meticulously takes one cookie at a time and places it on the baking sheet.  When he's finally finished they are all mostly on one side, so he has to spread them out (and gets a little help before they are popped into the oven).

Then of course comes the waiting... but that's no problem thanks to his ten thousand trains that he has.  Notice the nice MAT on the floor... that was a gift from Todd.  I asked for a Silpat for Christmas (and notice how we are using it for the cookies, I loves it!), and Todd went last minute shopping without a list and all he could remember was that I wanted some kind of a mat!  So he got me a PLACE mat, and this FLOOR mat!  Nice attempt, but the best thing is this floor mat is AWESOME... its so comfy and makes you want to wash dishes... I'm not kidding.

And finally we have the cookies!  They taste best when they're warm (but I pull them out right after 9 minutes so they stay really soft even days later), so of course we gobbled up a bunch.  Mmm!  I think next time I go shopping I'm going to have to get another pack... you know, because they have TWO different Valentine's Day designs, and we have to see how the arrow heart ones taste!

Hey Bobo... did you eat a million cookies or what? (I think that's a yes.)

Valentine's Oreo Truffles

Instead of buying people chocolates this year I made some Oreo truffles, after seeing them on Bakerella's website. They looked SO good I had to make them. I kind of winged the recipe, and since I was crushing the cookies by hand ended up adding some heavy cream to make them easier to crush, which I wouldn't do again they came out kind of mushy.

Here is what I came up with after mushing up about 3/4 a package of Oreos, a big pour of heavy cream and four ounces of cream cheese with a potato masher. They're shiny because they're gooey and damp, just like you dipped your Oreo cookies in milk. Mmm, oreos and milk...


Then I melted various types of chocolate and had one heck of a time dipping and dripping, in the end they came out lumpy and messy but that makes them more fun to eat, right?

Arin loved them, as you can see he was the one eating these while I assembled the little festive boxes. He managed to snag two, the peanut butter one and a dark chocolate one.

I added some heavy cream to the dark chocolate and the peanut butter when I was melting them, so the coating is a bit mousse-like, which made them easier to 'frost' and more light and fluffy. The milk chocolate ones came out with a traditional hard-shell coating.

This is what Arin has looked like this for the past three days, I swear. No chocolate is safe.

And here is the updated Valentine's table with just SOME of our assorted goodies on it. Minus the strawberries which are chilling on the porch, and a bunch of delicious from-scractch chocolate cupcakes. Those cupcakes there are Julie's attempt to make red-velvet. :)

Flowers

We got some pretty flowers for Valentine's Day (and a balloon for Arin). They smell even better than they look, the whole house smells like sweet roses. Almost like having spring in the here after all!

I've decided I really love mixed bouquets. The Gerber daisies are so fresh looking!




And here's Arin with his 'boon', momentarily distracted from trying to get more chocolate...

How's this for Romance

Everyone in my family had a nice Valentine's Day planned. Mom and Carl went down to the Cape, Julie and Lauren went down to stay in Provincetown, Arin ate a TON of chocolate, and me... well, this about sums it up:


I got to spend the day cleaning toilets, doing laundry, dusting icky stuff and finally, cooking a big dinner. And I had a monster pile of pots and pans waiting for me bright and early this morning. Oh well, at least there are tons of yummy treats hanging around the house for me to feel better with!

I did get to make some chocolate covered strawberries (still haven't been eaten, except for the two that 'didn't make it' through the fudge dipping ;) and some of Bakerella's Oreo Truffles.

Mine came out very... rustic looking? I added some heavy cream to my Oreo stuffing so they were a bit moister than I think they technically should be, so dipping them was a challenge. Oh, and I didn't use white chocolate, not a big fan. I dipped some in milk chocolate, some in semi-dark chocolate (the strawberry dip) and some in melted Reese's peanut butter chips. The peanut butter is VERY yum!

Almost V-Day

This year Arin will be big enough to appreciate Valentine's Day for what it really means... chocolate. He's obsessed already, I can already imagine what a great day he'll have with a whole bunch of treats to sample.



This is from my birthday breakfast that Julie and Lauren made... but it gets the idea across.

Someone small and sweet stole my heart... and then ate it messily.