Chopped

We watched a few episodes of chopped at our house, and the girls were hooked.

They played it with their play food over and over again. 

Until today, when we let them play Chopped with real food.

They were so excited.

The basket ingredients were: cooked chick peas, watermelon, pretzel sticks, and cheese stick. And they were able to use the items in the pantry.

They thought it was so fun.
And in the end, Caitlin was chopped and Ashlee won.

Jan. Cupcakes

For Christmas I got a new calendar that has a different kind of cupcake each month. 

My goal (although I don't make goals :) ) is to make each months cupcake.

January was the donut shop cupcake.

Ashlee and I made them for FHE last night.  Because they called for coffee in the cupcake and the frosting we made a few changes.  Plain chocolate cupcakes and hot chocolate frosting.
They were delicious!

Decorating sugar cookies

My favorite way to decorate sugar cookies:

1 egg yoke- divided and dyed desired colors

dyed egg yoke painted on the uncooked cookies

Freshly painted cookies sprinkled with sugar

Bake according to sugar cookie recipe

cookies come out beautiful and tasting delicious

Goodie Making

This week we have been baking a lot of scrumptious holiday goodies.

(By "we" I mean myself and Caitlin and Ashlee. Chris was giving finals all day Monday and Tuesday.)

We made fudge- for the first time ever. Chocolate fudge and peanut butter fudge. It turned out pretty good, although I'm not sure I cooked it quite long enough, the elevation thing throws me for cooking candies.

Breaking up candy canes for chocolate candy cane sandwich cookies.

They really liked making these cookies and kept saying, "Daddy will love these," because they know their daddy loves candy canes.

We had an assemble line. Ashlee helped spoon on the frosting and Caitlin put the "lids" on.

I am glad we gave most of it away, or we would all be gaining 40lbs this Christmas.

The girls played in backyard yesterday afternoon. I inadvertently left the sandbox toys out this year, but it is just as well because there is NO SNOW in the backyard. It has even melted away from all the places that never see the sun in the winter and so usually have snow all winter long.

I can't believe our yard looks like this in mid-December. (although we did get a dusting of snow last night)