Many people only think about gingerbread cookies at Christmas time. But these are one of our households favorite cookies and the kinds love to decorate them. I thought I would share this for a change of pace, plus the gingerbread can be cut into all sorts of shapes with your cookie cutters, although all we used were large drinking glasses.

All you will need is the ingredients for the cookie recipe and then all sorts of candies to decorate with.

Cookie Materials and Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease one cookie sheet.
2. Mix together the molasses, brown sugar, water and shortening.
3. Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, allspice, ginger, cloves and cinnamon. Add to sugar mixture and mix well. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours.
4. Continue to the decorating instructions.

Cookie Decorating Instructions:

1. Make cookie dough and use large round cookie cutters or a drinking cup to create circles. Bake as directed and allow to cool off completely.
2. Place different types of decorations into small bowls. We used Dots candy, spiced gumdrops, nonpareils, Skittles candies, and white tube decorator frosting.
3. Use decorator frosting to draw on rick rack.
4. To “glue” on eyes, cheeks and nose, dot some frosting onto the cookie, then gently press the decoration on top of it.
5. Cut gumdrops in half, use the top half for eyes and bottom half for cheeks.
6. To make colorful hair, cover top of cookie with decorator icing them dip into nonpareils or sprinkles.

I had this very nice meal with some friends yesterday at my house… we didn’t have anything in mind when they got here, but we all love Chilaquiles or Nachos (Tortilla chips with chicken, cheese and sauce)… So we just started making stuff without a clear image in mind.  Our final product was amazing! And since I had so many photos I figured I’d share the recipe with you!

What you’ll need:

• Tortillas (If you can get real tortillas you can cut them in 4 and fry them or just use normal tortilla chips)
• Chicken
• Fried beans (I think you can get canned ones at the supermarket)
• Cheese (the kind that melts easily)
• Cheese like parmesan or something similar
• Chunky tomato sauce (something like those sauces that come in jars, we have them in jars here… )
• And a bunch of friends to help you out! (not necessary, but it sure makes it more fun!)

The hard part is to get everything ready to prepare it, once you are done the rest is easy…

1.  Prepare the tortillas (in case you have to fry them), the chicken (I used 4 chicken breasts, some water, salt, a bit of tomato, pepper and onion, you’ll need the broth afterwards), the beans( fry them in case you don’t get canned, already made fried beans).  For the sauce, just use a couple of jars of salsa and add the broth, boil it until it’s a bit thick…

Everything should look like this…

2. Once all that is ready is time to get ready for the good part!

Try to add the chicken to the tortillas, my friend just started adding handfuls of chicken everywhere she could, trying to make sure there was chicken everywhere.

Then, spread the friends beans over that… don’t worry, you don’t have to get chicken everywhere like with the chicken just over the whole thing…

Next, put pour the sauce over the tortillas, try to make enough sauce to get sauce everywhere, you’ll want your chilaquiles nice and moist… then just add the grated cheese…

Since our entire planned changed when we were making them, and ended up with one big pan of chilaquiles I figured we should put them in the oven a few minutes to get the cheese to melt a little… so, just turn on the oven at 350 degrees and leave them there for about ten minutes… And you’ll get something that should look as yummy as this…

Give it a try, or improvise… You really won’t regret it!

Oh, and if you are in a desperate need of a really quick dessert just take a couple of boxes of jello (any flavor really) and a can of sweetened milk.

Make the jello like directed on the box/Pour the sweetened milk in the blender with the jello and blend! /Pour it on a pan, you can add some fruits, but they are not necessary and take it to the fridge… Just let it set and enjoy! (I don’t add a photo, because mine suffered an accident when I was going to serve it…

Who doesn’t love graham crackers?

Well, I do. I use them all the time for pie crusts, quick breading on chicken cutlets – goes great with a peanut sauce , and for quick snacks (grahams and cream cheese – like a mini cheesecake). They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – so here is my imitation of the unsung hero in my kitchen:

The Graham Cracker.

You will need:

felt in 2 colors – cracker brown and a pink of your choice for cheeks (I prefer all wool felt not the poly-acrylic craft felt. The wool holds together better, the p-a pulls apart very easily, but use what you have. )

cotton embroidery floss in 3 colors – cracker brown, pink to match the cheeks and black for details

sharp scissors, pins, sharp embroidery needle and  a bit of patience

Cut out four rectangles from the brown felt, I used an actual graham cracker as a template and it measured 5″ by 2.5″. Cut eight circles for the cheeks from the pink felt at about .25″ in diameter. I used the cap of a pen for a template for the circles.

Fold one of the rectangles in half width-wise and mark this with pins. Place two cheeks in each square and pin in place. Use your pink embroidery floss and stitch each cheek in place using blanket stitch. Each strand of embroidery floss is made up of six individual threads, I only used three for the cheeks.

Now using only two strands of the black floss add some facial features, eyes,  mouth, noses if you please.

I used a comics “how to draw” book for inspiration on the eyes and mouths, but use your imagination Repeat this process on a second rectangle.

Once these two pieces are finished set them aside. On the third and fourth rectangles mark your middle with pins, just the same as with the first two, and beginning in the very center place a running stitch up the lengthwise center to the edge. This divides the half into the familiar quarters. Now we’ll work french knots to simulate the impressions in a real graham cracker. I use a three wrap french knot, but do what you are comfortable with.

Work four evenly space knots about .25″ away from the running stitch. Work three more knots .25″ over and staggered from the first four and then repeat the first four along the outside edge.

Repeat on the other side of that square, turn the piece, add another running stitch and repeat the french knots. Work the same steps on the fourth rectangle.

Pin one french knotted rectangle to one with faces, wrong sides together, and place a running stitch along the width-wise center. Now work a blanket stitch around all four sides and your goofy graham is done!

You could easly make some sassy saltines, cheesy cheez-itzs or any of your favorite crackers. 

Toots

I think that baking is a craft unto itself.  And now that summer is here, there are plenty of recipes floating around the web for the fresh food in your garden and farmers market!  I’ve tried quite a few so far, and some I have even changed up a bit to make them my own.

For starters, there is a great recipe at Angry Chicken for a rhubarb hand pie…and I do love rhubarb pie!  From the pictures, it looks like she got some really sweet rhubarb (the redder it is, the sweeter it is) but I have found that boiling rhubarb in sugar water before using it makes the green rhubarb so much sweeter!  Plus, I found that you can substitute other fruits with this same recipe…I took out half the rhubarb and replaced it with blueberries for a tangy mix.

I made a pineapple rhubarb pie for the county fair last month using this recipe from Cooks.com.  It was kind of fun, I hadn’t entered anything in a fair since I was in 4H as a kid.  It did pretty well, but I think I could have made the top crust look cuter!

Just today on the Craft magazine blog was a link to a yummy looking recipe for blueberry crumb bars from Smitten Kitchen and I’m thinking I might have to try that one out tomorrow!

Our cucumber plants are growing like crazy, so I need to learn how to properly can pickles.  But until I do, I found a recipe for refrigerator pickles here.  And another great way to use up cucumbers is to mix them with your ranch dressing and some fresh dill to make a dip.

If anyone have any other great recipes to share, please leave them in the comments!