Snowflakes and Christmas Cookies!

Monday was cooking with Stacy and Tatum day - we have missed a few of our cooking days and so it was great to be together and cookin' again!

First we made a cookie from my childhood - Nutmeg Logs.  My Nonnie used to make these for us and they just seem like Christmas to me.  Well, in my usual fashion I went to get the recipe the night before we were cooking...and...I'm sure you already know...I couldn't find it!  Mind you it is somewhere in the house in a safe spot - but out of my reach for now.  So - on to the World Wide Web - and lo and behold someone else had lost their grandmother's recipe and she had sent out a plea to anyone who had the recipe to post it for her.  That right there is only one of the wonderful things about the internet!  Thanks to the WWW we were able to make Nutmeg Logs!

Apparently the recipe is an old Pillsbury one and we found it on www.christmas-cookies.com

Nutmeg Logs

1 Cup butter - softened
2 tsp vanilla
2 tsp rum flavoring (or rum!)
3/4 Cup sugar
1 egg
3 Cups sifted (or not ) flour
1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg (you can use the unfresh kind also!)
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Cream softened butter with the flavorings.  Beat in the sugar, then mix in the egg.  In a separate bowl, stir in the flour, nutmeg, and salt.  Mix with the butter/sugar mixture.  Shape the resulting dough into snakes about 1 inch in diameter, and cut the pieces to 3 inches in length (we cut them a bit smaller so there would be more cookies!).  Bake on a greased cookie sheet for 12-15 minutes.  Remove to a wire rack to cool.  Frost with rum frosting.  Make grooves in the frosting with a fork, and sprinkle ground nutmeg on the logs while the frosting is still moist.  ( the grooves are to make the cookies look like little logs - when we are lazy we don't make the grooves...and guess what the cookies still taste great!)

Rum Frosting

1/3 Cup butter - softened
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp rum flavoring (or rum)
2 Cups confectioner's sugar
2 tbsp milk

Cream together butter, vanilla, and rum.  Stir in sugar and milk and beat until creamy.

You can see in this pic we started doing the little fork grooves and then got lazy!

This next recipe we found on Bakerella  - you must check out her blog she does such fun things!

Nutter Butter Balls

1 pkg Nutter Butter cookies
1 8 oz pkg cream cheese
Chocolate Bark or Chocolate Chips

1.  Finely crush all but 5 of the cookies in a food processor or put them in a ziploc bag and crush.

2.  Combine with cream cheese.  Use the back of a large spoon to help mash the two together.

3.  Roll the mixture into 13 (or so) balls and place on a wax paper covered cookie sheet.

4.  Melt chocolate in microwave (or double boiler) and dip the balls into the chocolate.  Tap off extra chocolate and set aside on wax paper lined cookie sheet to dry.

5.  Once dry refrigerate and enjoy!

These are such an easy cookie and soooooo yummy - a bit like a Reese's cup.

At lunch time we made snowflakes...who knew it would be so hard!?

We had lots of fun laughing at our attempts - we got backwards snowflakes, falling apart snowflakes, square snowflakes...everything but real snowflakes.

But, we were determined...and with the help of Cathe Holden at Just Something I Made we finally got there!

We used these diagrams...

and made up some of our own...

So, thanks Stacy and Tatum for another fun cooking day - we are looking forward to coming to your house next week to make our biscotti tree!

Now go and make some Christmas cookies!  You know you want to eat them!

xoxo     Elizabeth