Christmas Cookies!

Who doesn't love this time of year?

With all the sparkly lights, the fluffy white snow, seeing all 176 of your relatives and of course, the YUMMY Christmas treats everyone seems to be cooking up this time of year.

This really is the most wonderful time of the year!

Now, let's make the most wonderful, simple sugar cookies!

(with a colorful twist)

Sugar Cookie Ingredients:

2 1/4 Cups Flour

1 Cup Butter (room temp)

1 Cup Sugar

1 Egg

1 T. Vanilla

1 T. Baking Powder

1/4 T. Salt

(and a few drops of food coloring- red and green)

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Bake time: 8-10 minutes.

Makes about 2 dozen!

Beat the softened, room temperature butter until it is cream, then add the sugar, baking powder and salt and beat it some more! I always whisk by hand and this took me 2-3 minutes to get it nice and fluffy.

Next, add the egg and vanilla and beat the dough again.

Slowly begin to add the flour, about 1/2 a cup at a time.

You might have to use your hands to kneed the last little bit of flour into the dough, since it will get harder and harder as you add more flour.

Now, split the dough in half and add 5-6 drops of red food coloring into one half and 3-4 of green into the other half!

(I used more red because I didn't want my dough to look pink)

Kneed and kneed until the food coloring has been evenly distributed throughout the dough!

(it got a bit messy)

Wrap each half in plastic wrap and pop them into the freezer for an hour.

Once the dough has hardened a bit, it should look like this!

Now you can roll it out and start cutting your shapes!

oooooor

You can roll out each color and lay one on top of the other, roll them up and then cut them up into cookies!

Like this:

(we only did this with half of each color so we could still cut out Christmas shapes and decorate them)

I sprinkled the top of the spiral cookies with some course sugar!

Looks pretty Christmassy to me!

With the rest of the dough we made Christmas shapes to decorate!

 My little helper in the kitchen!

Santa is watching you!!

Merry Christmas!

Coffee Cupcakes with Maple Bacon Butter Cream

So for my hubby's birthday,

 I decided to go a little crazy and experiment with some of his favorite flavors!

Bacon.

Who doesn't love bacon??

Well, my husband sure does.

I think I've made him bacon flavored something for every special occasion and holiday for the last 2 years!

Candied bacon, chocolate covered bacon roses, bacon cupcakes...

just to name a few.

These cupcakes were amazing. The coffee and bacon worked magically together and the maple made it taste just a little breakfasty!

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and fill a cupcake pan with cupcake papers.

(I sprayed the pan with Pam before putting in the cupcake papers)

Coffee Cupcakes Ingredients:

2 Cup Flour

1 Cup Sugar 
(I used pure cane sugar, you don't have to)

1 Stick Butter

2 Eggs

3/4 Cup Coffee
(I used dark espresso roast)

1 T. Baking Powder

1 1/4 T. Baking Soda

1 T. Salt

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt and set aside. 
In a separate bowl, whisk together the softened butter and sugar until they are fluffy.  

 (I know fluffy isn't a technical term...but they look...ya know, fluffy once they are whisked for a couple of minutes...)

(Mine looks a bit grainy because of the sugar I used)

This stuff.

 To your fluffy butter and sugar mixture, add the eggs one at a time and whisk.

Slowly add the flour mixture to the wet mixture (about a half a cup at a time).

Once you've evenly incorporated the two, slowly begin to add the coffee, stirring the whole time, make sure to get rid of all the lumps!

Pour your cupcake batter into each cupcake paper very carefully! 

(you don't want to get any under the papers or on the pan itself!) 

Pop those into the oven for about 25 minutes.

______________________________________________________________

While you are waiting for your cupcakes to bake, you can start frying up some bacon for your icing!

I used about 9 slices for 24 cupcakes, if you'd like a little more for the topping, you can fry up more than that.

Maple Bacon Butter Cream:

1 1/2 Cups Confectioners Sugar (Powdered Sugar)

1/3 Cup Maple Syrup

3 Tbsp. Softened Butter

1-2 T. Bacon Drippings

Once your bacon has gotten nice and crispy, put it into a strainer with a bowl underneath.

Make sure you keep the drippings, you're going to need those later!

To the 1 1/2 Cups of Powdered sugar, you're going to add the Maple syrup and softened butter and beat the mixture until it is nice and smooth. It should still be a little stiff. 

The bacon drippings should loosen it up a bit. If you need to add more than 2 teaspoons, go ahead! You want the butter cream icing to be soft and smooth, but not runny and not too thick. 

(you can stick the icing in the fridge until your ready for it)

After your cupcakes are done baking and have cooled for at least 20 minutes outside of the cupcake pan, You can start icing them!

I buy those disposable icing bags and have a bunch of metal tips laying around my house...if you don't have that, I've actually stuck my icing into a Ziplock bag before and cut off the very tip of one of the corners!

It won't look fancy, but it's a super easy/cheap trick!!

Ice those suckers with about a tablespoon/tablespoon and a half of the butter cream.

Now you can crumble up your cooked bacon all over the top and BAM! 

Thee best bacon treat you'll ever eat.

You're Welcome.