Apple Dips!

OK, here is another dessert or snack. It's not from Pinterest, just from my head, so I'm sure there will be variations...

Cut an apple in squares & give each apple square a toothpick or stick of some type.

Dip them in carmel, then melted chocolate. I used candy I wanted eaten in a hurry. I melted it in a mini crock pot, but true bakers chocolate would have been far smoother. You might want to let each layer cool first, or let them mix together when dipping while the layers are still warm. I added almonds in the melted carmel & chocolate.

Eat warm or chill & eat later. Cute wrapping would make for great treats!

And as long as I'm sharing kitchen ideas, try this:
Make some extra dough when you make a pie & use cookie cutters to decorate the top of the pie. I like to glaze the pie crust with a little egg white, plus it helps the cutouts stick in place.

Yummy Hats???

I'm not addicted, but I sure do love Pinterest. I'm not a cook, but I sure do love baking yummy things. I am a costume designer, but I don't wear hats... ok, on rare occasion. I found a pin that tells how to make bowls with cookie dough! Like I said, I'm not a cook... I didn't want to bother making the dough from scratch, so I used a box-dough & followed the instructions in the pin to place the dough on an upside down muffin pan.

In the oven the dough began melting & separating from the top section, but when it baked it fluffed up & filled in the gaps for the most part. However, rather than making bowl shaped cookies, it created a brim when melting down, and when baked it resulted in a cookie with a hat shape! My son loved that.

So the only thing to do next was to fill the cookie hat with ice-cream & eat! Yummy hats!

Making a Masterpiece from Mayhem

As we finish out the first week in our new house; the boxes, the lost stuff, the empty kitchen cupboards and the wildly happy child, I found myself strangely setting in. The other night David was insitent, & I mean INSISTENT the we bake gingerbread cookies. First off, where did he even learn about baking gingerbread cookies? And second, why was he so adamant that we do this. I realized there was a store-bought mix in the pantry, one of the few things we had in the house, and we actually had the water, the egg & the oven! So I gave in, and we happily began the event. I made sure David understood that we had no gingerbread man cookie cutter. The only cutter I could find was an angel, oddly packed in a box of office supplies. He was fine with a gingerbread angel...no surprise there!

After mixing the dough I realized we had no pans to bake it in, but we did have a ceramic cookie jar & two ceramic bowls that my sister made for me some time ago. I divided up the dough & each ceramic container went into the oven. While they baked we gathered up some carmel dipping sauce from some McDonald's left overs, & some pretzel m&m's. I was lucky to have anything to work with so I thought we were doing pretty well!

 The whole thing was a lesson in improvisation. When the gingerbread came out of the oven we cut one into an angel, dripped the carmel sauce all over it & sprinkled the m&m's. Voila! As I saw the joy in my son's face I knew we had created a masterpiece...and the gingerbread angel was pretty good too. Life. It's a comedy.