Happy Saint Nicholas Day

It was still dark and I'm pretty sure I was in a deep sleep when the first footsteps came padding into my bedroom this morning to alert me that Saint Nicholas had come in the night and had filled their shoes with goodies. I think after that I may have even been covered in a few wet kisses and squeals of delight before I tried to sneak in a few more minutes of sleep instead of getting out of bed *grin*. That didn't last long as more footsteps followed and there was a special treat from mama to be prepared as well :)

Saint Nicholas had been most generous and had stuffed their shoes to the brim with oranges and nuts, a couple of golden coins, a chocolate St. Nick figure...

and a little brown paper package for each of them.

As the aroma of cinnamon and fresh bread filled the air we sat at the dining room table with hot cocoa to unwrap the little packages :) Last year the children received christmas themed books but this year I found some lovely classics for the older children....

and a copy of a Magic School Bus book for M. He was thrilled to have a copy that he could call his very own :)

After that things got mighty quiet as book pages were turned and mouths were filled with warm bites of the marzipan, almond and cinnamon kringel that I had made for the occasion :)

The children must have all been very good this year because there was no visit from the Krampus thank goodness and Opa had a good time retelling tales of when he was a child in Austria and Sankt Nikolaus would visit his house.

We had made some special cookies using our favorite speculaas recipe and shaped them as Saint Nicholas but unfortunately my red gel icing didn't make them red but instead a deep shade of pink :( Oh well they still tasted delicious...

And were cute packed inside our little tins that were going to be dropped off as secret gifts to unsuspecting friends and family. You should hear the children giggle as they try to sneak up quietly to a house to ring the doorbell and then run away as fast as the can *grin*. I don't think they got caught once this year :)

 Do you celebrate St. Nicholas? I would love if you would leave a comment or a link to your blog letting me know what your family did today :)

Hugs,

Rosina

We're Sending Egg Mail!

How did I not think of this?!

Mailing large plastic Easter eggs for friends and family is like having the cadbury bunny lay an egg in their mailbox but even better LOL. When I ran across the idea here I went to the nearest dollar store to see if I could find eggs big enough to hold a bunch of goodies and accommodate a mailing label that I could write on large enough to be legible.

Two stores later I hit the jackpot! Brightly colored eggs that were a good 7 - 8 inches long and didn't feel to flimsy so that they would be able to take a good knocking around in the mail truck.

We filled them with chocolate, stickers, easter stamps, bunny masks and felted eggs that we had made. Nestled it all in a bit of paper easter grass and taped them tightly shut :)

Watch your mailbox... one of these just may be for you!

Hugs,
Rosina

Guardians of Ga'Hoole ~ Owl Cookies

Yesterday I surprised the kids with a special outing into town to watch the new animated movie The Guardians of Ga'Hoole based on the book series by Kathryn Lasky and to get a chance to see a real live owl!! The MARS (Mountainaire Avian Rescue Society) was at the theater to do a little talk all about owls and what their rescue society does and they brought along 'Shakespeare' a Barred Owl who is their educational ambassador. The kids loved it! Both the owl and the movie :)

As soon as we returned the home the kids began pretending they were owls and so far it hasn't stopped *grin*. So I thought it would be fun to make some owl cookies and owl masks to keep on with the owly fun!

I had ran across a picture of owl cookies on craft gossip but they were made from store bought sugar cookie dough and since we don't have anything like that readily available here I thought that it would be just as easy to whip up a batch of sugar cookie dough :)

So here it is... the make your own dough version of it *grin*.
Trust me if you can make cookie dough and know how to wield a rolling pin then this is going to be easy LOL.

4 eggs
2 cup sugar
2 cup unsalted butter

Cream the butter and sugar together. Add one egg at a time and beat really well until the butter mixture is super light and fluffy.

1 tsp. baking powder
5 cups all purpose flour

Add the flour and baking powder to the butter mixture and mix just until combined. You don't want to over mix or it will start to turn your dough tough. Once you've got it all combined, scoop out roughly 1 third of the dough into a separate bowl. Don't worry about being completely accurate, just eyeball it up. This is going to be the center of you owls eye :)

Now add
1 cup unsweetened cocoa
to the remaining 2/3 of your dough and mix until the cocoa is blended in evenly. This is going to be the outer part of your owls eye.

Now comes the fun part of shaping your plain white dough into a big snake shaped log. On a piece of wax paper, saran wrap or a non stick silicone mat (whichever you have will work) roll and squeeze your dough outwards in a log shape until it is about 18 inches long. By the time I had the length my roll was about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. As soon as you have finished wrap your log in saran wrap or wax paper and place on a flat surface in your refrigerator for about 10-15 minutes to firm up so you can handle it without worrying about dimpling or breaking it.

Next is to take your chocolate colored portion of the dough and shape it into an 18 inch long by 8 inch wide rectangle. Of course the kids couldn't resist squeezing and squishing the dough so this was a perfect job for them *grin*.

We did it on another sheet of wax paper and then I put an additional piece on top and ran the rolling pin over it to take all of the humps and bumps from the hand prints out of it :) Do not refrigerate this portion of your dough. You want it nice and soft for the next step!

Your log of white dough should be firm enough now to take out of the fridge now. Unroll it and place it on top of your chocolate rectangle and you are going to roll the chocolate layer around the white just like you were rolling up cinnamon buns :) Use your wax paper on the bottom of the chocolate layer to keep your hands from getting sticky and to aid in the smooth rolling of it. Don't worry it is definitely not hard to do and once it is all rolled up you can roll the whole log around on the counter in the wax paper a couple of times to make sure the two layers stick together nicely and you get a nice round shape. Place the entire log in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes to firm up again.

Now that you have one multicolored log of sugar cookie dough you're ready to put your owl faces together! Take your knife and slice off rounds of your dough roughly 1/4 - 1/2 inches thick...

and place in pairs on your cookies sheet. Make sure that the two pieces touch each other in the center and you will find that there will be a slightly flat side on each of your rounds caused by the pressure of cutting your log on the counter so place those flatter sides together in the middle :)

For the beaks use unsalted or raw cashews. Press them into the lower part of your center seam leaving the pointier part of the cashew out of the dough so that it looks like a hooked owls beak. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 350 degrees fahrenheit for 10 - 12 minutes or until just starting to brown and firm up around the edges and the centers are slightly puffed up.

As soon as your owl faces are cooled you can use your favorite icing recipe or frosting from a can if you like *grin* and add your eyeballs and lashes. I used reeses pieces because we had them on hand but you could use smarties or m&m's if you like to.

Just in case you want to know what my icing recipe is it's a simple butter frosting of 1/4 cup of butter and 1 1/2 cups icing sugar beat together with 2-3 tablespoons of milk until it comes to a squeezable consistency that you can squeeze through your piping bag. Another super quick way to create your chocolate icing would be to melt chocolate chips or bakers chocolate squares in a heat proof bowl. This works really well in a pinch *grin*. Another tip is if you don't have an actual piping bag you can use a regular ziploc baggy and just cut off one of the bottom corners and voila you have an instant piping bag :)

This recipe made 24 big owl faces and I hate to say it but we've eaten half of them already! LOL.

Sooooo good and super cute :)
Have yourself some owly fun to!

Hugs,
Rosina

Cake Cone Treats

Ice cream cone anyone?
I ran across the cutest ice cream cone cake pops over at Bakerella and I just had to recreate them for L's birthday :)

I couldn't find the exact recipe on her blog as to how to make them but with the photos and another little tutorial by her showing how to make cake pops it was enough to get me started. So armed with my baked chocolate cake I mixed in some frosting to make a moldable mixture that I could fill my sugar cones with and popped them into the freezer to firm up enough so that I could coat each one in pink chocolate and sprinkles and started making cake cones :)

Amazingly enough these were super easy to make and so darn cute!! I nearly don't want anyone to eat them LOL.

~ Rosina