Wordful Wednesday: The joy, the anticipation, the complete and utter deliciousness

To my dear Kaylee,

As your mother, there are so many things I'm responsible for teaching you. Look both ways before you cross the street. Don't cut in line. Be nice. Don't bite. Don't pinch. Don't throw a fit. Boys are disgusting. 2 + 2 = 4. Take your vitamins.

But, out of all the things I feel the need to teach you, I cannot even begin to describe the level of joy I felt when I realized I didn't need to teach you about how nothing else in the world matters when you've got a Christmas sugar cookie in your face. I feel like doing this very same thing with my own hands and opening my mouth as wide as it will go when I feast my eyes upon one of Grandma's sugar cookies, too. And I didn't even have to teach you. You figured it out all on your own. That's my girl, sweetie pie.

That's my girl.

Love, Mama

This post is a part of Wordful Wednesday, hosted by Angie at 7 Clown Circus.

Holiday How-To #4: Make to-die-for orange cream cookies

It's no secret I love food. Especially food with lots of sugar. And carbs. Sugar and carbs are where it's AT!

So, it shouldn't surprise you at all that one of my very favorite things about the holiday season is all the yummy goodies. Fudge, cookies, warm rolls straight out of the oven, pie, mmmmm...

One of my favorite memories of Christmas as a child was making sugar cookies with white frosting and rainbow colored sprinkles to leave out for Santa. What is that is just so darn fun about rainbow colored sprinkles on white frosting?

So, this past weekend I went to my first ever cookie exchange, which gave me a perfect excuse to bust out some recipes from my new Betty Crocker Christmas cookie cookbook. I'm trying not to have too many sweets in the house, but hello! I had to make 3 dozen cookies for this party, so the cookie making just had to happen.

I fell in love when I saw the words, "Orange Cream Cookies."

Holy toledo, Batman. Orange cream is one of my favorite flavors in the whole entire world. Orange cream soda, orange cream candy, orange cream ice cream treats, and now you're telling me I can have all that delicious goodness in a cookie? I love you, Betty Crocker.

So, here's the skinny on how you can make these rip-roaring tasty cookies. Now, keep in mind that in the picture in the cookbook, these cookies are a very calm, pastel-ish light orange color. That's because the recipe calls for 5 drops of yellow food color and 2 drops of red food color. Well, I decided to be cheap and buy the store brand food coloring. What I didn't realize is that there are no droppers on the store brand food coloring. I'm guessing I was off in my estimations of what the equivalent of 5 drops of yellow and 2 drops of red were.

Hence, the neon cookies that almost make you want to wear sunglasses.

Ingredients:

1 pouch (1 lb 5 oz) Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix
3 Tbsp. butter or margarine, melted
1 tsp. orange extract
1 tsp. vanilla
1 egg
5 drops yellow food color
2 drops red food color
1 bag (12 oz) white vanilla baking chips (2 cups) **I think 1.5 cups would be perfect - 2 was a bit much)

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350. In a large bowl, stir all ingredients except baking chips until soft dough forms. Stir in baking chips.

2. On ungreased cookie sheets, drop dough with 1 1/2 Tbsp-size cookie scoop or by rounded Tbsp about 2 inches apart.

3. Bake 9 to 10 minutes or just until dough is set (do not overbake). Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheets to cooling racks

Nutrition Info: Ahhh, who cares. Seriously.

This post is a part of Wordful Wednesday at 7 Clown Circus and the Holiday How-To's Blog Carnival going on at Le Musings of Moi.

Things are about to get ugly around here.

We only have two Thin Mint cookies left.

Dennis and I have very strict rules about the consumption of Girl Scout cookies. There is no other girl scout cookie I want besides Thin Mints. He loves those friggin' chocolate/caramel/coconut ones - I can't remember the name.

Anyway, I'm not so crazy about coconut on cookies, or anything for that matter.

So, when one if his students tried to sell him cookies, he bought himself a box of the coconut whatevers, and he got me a box of Thin Mints.

The rule is this: Dennis may NOT under ANY circumstances eat ANY of my Thin Mints.

My rationale? It's just not fair. I don't like his cookies, so I'm not going to eat any of them. Therefore, I want each and every one of my Thin Mints all for myself. Not too much to ask, right?

Well, he likes to mess with me and try to steal my cookies, so I had to come up with a plan. I discovered that if I put the box of cookies under the cushion of the papasan chair in our room, he would never find them. We rarely sit in the chair these days, so there was no risk of squishing the cookies.

Wouldn't ya know... a couple days ago I'm on the phone, and Kaylee starts fussing. We all happen to be in our room, so Dennis gets ready to pop a squat in the papasan chair and try to calm Kaylee down.

This results in me fanatically flailing my arms in an attempt to get him to NOT sit on the cushion and crush the cookies that were hidden. Thank heavens I saved the cookies, but I lost my hiding place, and I've been moving them to new hiding places at random times to try and throw him off my trail.

I think I've been successful in ensuring that every last cookie is consumed by ME and ONLY ME.

However, we now have a problem. There are only 2 left. And I want to eat them both. Right now. But then I won't have any more. Oh, what ever will I do...