Blood Clots and Puss

Tapioca Pudding + Mushed Strawberries =


Blood Clots and Puss! Yum!




This is what I made for Greg to bring to work for the treats contest. I got the idea from my mom who made it years ago for a Halloween party. Everybody was as disgusted as you probably are, but it really does taste good!

Weezer

I forgot how much I liked Weezer when I was a teenager until it came up on a Pandora station. I wish I was so cool that people paid me tons of money to play music. That looks like fun.

Sugar Cookie Recipe

Here's the recipe for those sugar cookies. They are excellent! And by the way, I never make only one batch...Two batches is just right for a family or if you want to share any.

2/3 cup shortening
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
4 tsp milk
2 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Cream shortening, sugar, and vanilla. Add egg and beat until light and fluffy. Stir in milk. Mix together dry ingredients in small bowl and then add to creamed mixture. Blend well. Divide dough in half and chill one hour. (I never do that, and my cookies turn out fine.)

On lightly floured surface roll dough to 1/4 inch thickness. (Too thin means crunchy cookies--no good. It has to be thick!) Cut out shapes and bake on greased cookie sheet at 350 degrees for about 8 minutes. Do not allow to brown. Bottom of cookies may be slightly golden. The cookies will still be soft when you take them out of the oven, but they will firm up as they set on the cookie sheet and cool. Remove to cooling racks after about 5 or 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

Happy Halloween!

I love making and decorating sugar cookies!


It really is an art...especially if you have these cool stencils to use. (Wendy gave me those a year or two ago.)



And thanks to Teri--I used the sprinkles you gave me for Christmas last year! The purple looked really good on the green or orange background. My favorite is the purple sparkly spider on the green cookie.

LIBERA

I posted one of their songs a little while ago, and here is another that I love. It sounds like Debussy's Clair de Lune.



In case you were wondering, you did hear a little bit of English:

"Star of heaven, send your light on me
Star of day, shine through the dark"

I had to look up the lyrics because it was bothering me that I thought I could understand some words, but then I'd listen hard and the rest seemed to be in latin.

Homemade Oreos

Yum. That's all there is to say.


(Sister's Blog)

For the Cookies:
1 package devil's food cake mix (or chocolate of any kind)
2 eggs
1/2 - cup oil

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Add oil and eggs to cake mix and blend together. Roll dough into balls (a little larger than a quarter). Place on greased cookie sheet. Bake for 8 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool on sheet (until warm). Remove cookies from sheet and place on cooling rack. To assemble the cookies, add about a tablespoon of filling into the center of one cookie. Place another cookie similar in size on top of the filling. Lightly press, to work the filling evenly to the outsides of the cookie. Continue this process until all the cookies have been sandwiched with cream.


Cream Cheese Filling Recipe:
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1 block of cream cheese (8 oz)
3-4 cups - powdered sugar (depending on desired consistency)
1 - tsp vanilla extract

(By the way, this made about 3 times as much filling as I needed. I would recommend cutting the filling recipe in half at least, or making more cookies. I will have to put the left over filling in the freezer for another time.)

Cream butter and add cream cheese and mix well. Add powdered sugar slowly until you reach your desired consistency.

These are easy and fast to make, and delicious! I love how soft they are. Oh, and I used my cookie scooper so they are all perfectly the same size.

Also, I decided to just frost the top of each cookie and not make it oreo style...that way they last a little longer, and I didn't really like eating two cookies at once.


PS. I tried making Fudge Crinkles using a strawberry cake mix instead, but they aren't that great. Well, Greg and all his friends at work liked them, but they just don't compare to chocolate. They are pretty though.

Chewy White Chocolate Chocolate Cookies

I believe in the healing power of chocolate. Since I have been home from about 3 1/2 weeks of visiting various family members, I felt bla and sad. I missed my family, I had a cold, and my house was a mess from partially moving in and then going on vacation. So I gathered my strength and made a pan of brownies, and it made all the difference in the world! Suddenly I had a new energy and motivation to work on my house, and I got over my cold. After that first bite of chewy chocolate, I became a new woman.


Today I dedicate this post to another recipe I found on the Sister's Cafe Blog: Chewy White Chocolate Chocolate Cookies. A recipe that has the word, "Chocolate" in it twice has GOT to be good!



1 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cup flour
1 1/4 cup Dutch cocoa
2 tsp baking soda
2 cup white chocolate chips

(I would reduce the amount of chips to maybe one cup, or one and a half cups...it was hard to keep them all mixed in the dough because there were too many.)


Cream the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla and salt.

Combine flour, cocoa, and baking soda, then gently mix into creamed ingredients. Fold in white chocolate chips.

Bake cookies on ungreased cookie sheet at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

Enjoy!

Plant Video

I finally got around to fixing up my plant video. I took all the pictures over a year ago and then forgot about it. It looks like it was made by a 5-year-old, but I think I learned a lot from it and now I have ideas to make a better one. Hope you don't feel motion-sick from watching it. Ta Da.