Snowglobe cupcakes

So our sweet little Caiti-did had her 5th B-day party & I got to make her some cupcakes. She requested chocolate & something with bears and the color purple. I saw a picture of a cool idea at bakearella.com & HAD to try it for her birthday. I ended up doing purple ballarina bear snowglobe cupcakes. The 'globe' part is one of those round coke bottles you see at Wal-mart this time of year with the top cut off and the 'stand' is the cupcake turned upside down with the wrapper cut off the bottom & frosted like the top. Too cute huh? I'll give the specific directions for 'how-to' below. Also, since I ment to do it a few days ago and forgot, I'm going to post a great 'holiday' guacamole recipe I got from Kim and my creamy miso dressing recipe. You should know, getting Ethan to eat salad is a rather painfull experience......until now. I made this dressing a few days ago and the kid ate 3 plates of salad then ate his dinner and then ate another plate of salad. Why I didn't try it on him earlier now escapes me. I'm just glad we ran out of ranch dressing so I had to whip up something else that night. Okay, for the directions and recipes....

Pepparkakor-The Diabetics holiday cookie

So I was looking all over for a great cookie recipe for diabetics that didn't involve Splenda. The answer came when I remembered a conversation I'd had with Linda Barney 2 years ago about a spice cookie that only has 1 gram of sugar per cookie. (For those of you who don't know that's pretty good. The average cookie has anywhere from 10-20 grams of sugar per cookie & even animal crackers usually have about 4 per tiny little cookie.) It took a bit of looking, some research and-alas-a lot of fiddling in the kitchen but I've devised a recipe I really like. It really has a kick-no 1 or 2 tsps of spices here there are a full 2 Tablespoons of 3 different spices. I also added some orange oil which I really liked but Jon said he liked them better without. Also, they have a nice 'snap' to them. I like a spice cookie that is thin and crunchie not soft. I tried the recipe from the official website of Sweden but they didn't keep their pretty shape at all because they shrank every time I baked them even if I rolled them thin enough nearly to see through. Also, they always ended up being soft and chewy. I even checked the relative humidity of Stockholm vs Lake Jackson to see if that was the problem, but no dice. It's practically the same in both places. I've decided that it has to be that I cut the sugar in half. I know, I know you can't dink around in baking the way you do in cooking because it's all scientific and whatnot but I'm me and that won't change. As is on their website each cookie would have over 2 grams of sugar per 1 1/2 inch cookie so cut the sugar on it. I included the link so any of you who want to could give it a try but I don't suggest messing with the sugar ratio. Their recipe is more like a regular dough-it has WAY more flour than mine-and thus is easier to roll out and get onto the cookie sheet without any problems. My recipe took a little practice before I could work well with the dough, but the result was a beautiful cookie with great snap, a lot of flavor and only 1 gram of sugar per cookie. And if I'm going to take the time to make cookies for someone for the holidays then-for me-it's worth the little bit of extra effort. So, for the recipe and a few tips I discovered to make it easier....

Sugar Cookie Bandit

Last week the boys (currently known as Batman-aka Ethan-and Superman-Christopher) and I made nearly 200 sugar cookies to give out to friends and family for Christmas. We had a lot a fun and decorated about half of them that day. Jon was out at a meeting and then church ball that night and, being pregnant, I was worn out and went to bed around 9 PM. I woke up at 10:30 and Jon still wasn't home from basketball yet but since I was up I thought I'd check on the kids. I went into their room and there was my little angel Ethan laying on his stuffed dog on the floor with his head akwardly propped up on their shoe bucket. I went over to put him in his bed and noticed that there was something on his bed. Turns out it was the 3 brand new jars of cookie sprinkles I'd bought the day before all dumped into a pile in the middle of his bed. Joy. Then, as I turn back to the somewhat less angelic looking Ethan I realized why he had gone to sleep with his head propped up on the shoe bucket. He had emptied the shoe bucket of it's rightful contents and dumped the 120 or so cookies we had decorated that day into the bucket and had gone off to dreamland happily munching sugar cookies. (Needless to say, those cookies had to be set aside for little boy consumption and a whole new batch made to give away.) Let's just say the little runt is lucky he was asleep when I discovered his dastardly deeds.

We were all decorating some more of the cookies together Saturday (or maybe we were doing the gingerbread houses??) and someone said something about how Santa gets so fat because he eats so many cookies at Christmas and Ethan says "Yeah, Santa's fat. And you're fat too Dad." "Thanks" says Jon sarcastically. "You're welcome" replies Ethan rather cheerily. Apparently, to a 3-year old, any likness one might have to Santa has got to be a good thing. For the cookie recipe & more pics...

IT SNOWED!!

It really is December! Friday afternoon it snowed here. Nevermind that it was really just a few flakes and nothing actually stuck to the ground. Beggars can't be choosers after all. In celebration of that fact we made tortilla snowflakes & snowball cookies.

The picture at the top is our little paper tube caroling family. It’s one of the activities we’ve done for our advent calendar this year. You can find the directions at http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/christmas-choir-661390/ if you want to do them too.

We’re still van-less here at the Whipple house. Some days we do okay & some days Jonathan getting home is the only thing standing between the boys and certain death (or at least being grounded to their room until they’re 20). A couple of days ago the boys were arguing about some toy or something & I said “Hey, I want two happy, obedient boys” to which Christopher replied with a very puzzled look on his face “But it’s not your birthday.” Jon thought that was hilarious. I guess that will teach me to ask for nice obedient boys for my birthday.

In addition to the cookie recipes, I’ve also posted the recipe for the meatloaf we had the other night. It was pretty good according to Jon & he’s not really a fan of meatloaf. Ethan, as usual, had several servings & proclaimed how much he liked it as well.

For those grandparents and great-grandparents not around I also put up the pictures of the kids ‘sledding’ Texas style on a mound of hay & the boys pictures with Santa. For the pictures and recipes

Roasted Chicken and Gnocchi Soup

So, our van is still in the shop & I'm stranded inside with my sweet little heathens. I'm not sure if I'm going to make it through the next week. Ethan has WAY too much energy to be cooped up inside all day. We haven't gone out though because A) my knee still gives me trouble if I walk too far on it so we can't walk to a park, B) Christopher is just getting over a bug of some sort & I don't want to risk taking him out & going through more nights of vomiting & C) I didn't want to ask anyone for a ride to anywhere because of said bug. Yesterday Ethan got a little toy 'light saber' and handed it to Ryan & very sweetly said "There you go Ry Ry." I was just thinking how nice it was for him to be so sweet to his baby brother when he grabbed a dowel I had left on the counter from doing the cakes & yelled "hiyah!" while smacking Ryan square on top of the head. Poor little Ryan was so startled it took a good 5 seconds before he started wailing. Poor little munchkin.
On to food...
Jon & I stopped at Olive Garden while we were in San Antonio & had this fantastic soup for lunch. The following is my version of it (at least my first version of it). It's a little creamier than the Olive Garden recipe but I can't decide if I liked it better creamy or not. Either way, you could substitute some of the cream/milk for some chicken broth and it would still be good. It has spinach in it which Jon hates, but he and the boys really liked the soup anyway & didn't even pick out the spinach. I got the gnocchi (No-key) recipe off Epicurious.com because it had rave reviews. I think it turned out a bit too dense for me, but I'm going to post it anyway because it's what I have. Part of my problem is that I don't have a ricer which I always thought was for fussy eaters because I like some lumps in my mashed potatoes, but it doesn't really work in gnocchi. You can buy pre-made gnocchi or you could just substitute regular dumplings for the gnocchi. For those of you who don't know, gnocchi are little potato dumplings. For the recipe....