December 13th, 2008 by Alicia
We still haven’t gotten around to painting cookies, but I wanted to share the recipe I used. I search high and low every year for a good sugar cookie recipe and can never find one. It’s always too sticky or too crumbly or expands too much and loses its shape. This one is PERFECT and tastes so good. The glaze is really easy and tasty too. Enjoy!
Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies
1 cup white sugar
1 cup butter, softened
1 (3 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg yolk
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
In a large bowl, combine the sugar, butter, cream cheese, salt, almond and vanilla extracts, and egg yolk. Beat until smooth. Stir in flour until well blended. Chill the dough for 8 hours, or overnight.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough 1/3 at a time to 1/8 inch thickness, refrigerating remaining dough until ready to use. Cut into desired shapes with lightly floured cookie cutters. Place 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Leave cookies plain for frosting, or brush with slightly beaten egg white and sprinkle with candy sprinkles or colored sugar.
Bake for 7 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until light and golden brown. Cool cookies completely before frosting.
Vanilla Glaze
1/3 cup butter or stick margarine
2 cups powdered sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 to 4 tablespoons hot water
Melt better over low heat. Remove from heat. Stir in powdered sugar and vanilla. Stir in hot water 1 tablespoon at a time until consistency of thick syrup. Ice cookies immediately. Glaze will harden quickly.
October 2nd, 2007 by Alicia
DH took both boys in the car to get dinner, and before that they were at the park. I have had almost two solid hours of wonderful silence and it has been heaven. I used the time to bake up a butternut squash I’ve had sitting on the counter for awhile now (did you know you can keep those babies around for close to four months and they don’t go bad?) and pureed it up for Beckett.
That batter bowl is filled with almost eight cups of squash. It loaded up four ice cube trays of 14 cubes each. The cubes are about an ounce each, so I made approximately 56 ounces. When you figure that jars of Gerber squash are 2.5 ounces and $0.59 each, that’s $0.23 per ounce. I bought the squash for two bucks — about 3.6 cents per ounce. Sa-weeeeet. It smelled a lot better too. Now my whole house smells like Autumn.
It was actually fun for me to do this time, nothing at all like the horrors of peaches. I want to try some pumpkin next. If only he was older, I could add some cinnamon. Yum. Oh, and I guess it would help if he’d actually eat the food. We’re working on that again tomorrow.
Sarah tagged me to tell her what I think should be in the running for “Grosser than Gross.” You sure you want to know, Sarah? I think I had one of my grossest moments today, actually. Clearing dishes off the counter and into the dishwasher, and I opened a sippy cup to rinse. Oh, look! It has milk in it from four days ago! It had morphed into a solid moldy milk patty, and let me tell you internet, this is not something you want to experience. It was the worst, most overwhelmingly putrid smell ever. I was literally heaving while I rinsed it down the drain. That, my friends, is grosser than gross.
Sawyer also took off his diaper today and peed on the linoleum, which I later slipped and fell in. That was pretty gross, too. But it’s got nothing on the sour milk or grape skin and raisin poops I have scraped into the toilet. I always tell DH that I need to call Mike Rowe and have him feature the dirty job of motherhood on his show. Because I think we wade through the poo and puke with the best of ‘em. Just saying.
I’m supposed to pick a couple other people to tell their tales of grossness, so I tag MomSmoo, Louann and Jayna. Gross me out, ladies!
Also! Jayna thinks I’m nice. 
She bestowed this little award on me. Thanks Jayna! I’m amazed that I fooled you into thinking that flattered. 
To pass on the spirit of niceness, I’m giving this award out to Sarah and Louann, who both gave me a very warm welcome into the blog world.
I also got another award a few days ago from Dixiechick. Thanks, girl! I’m really feeling the blogger love lately.
I started this post over an hour ago and the boys have been back (and very loud) for 20 minutes now. So I should get them off to bed and then finish my grocery list so I can replenish the barren shelves of my pantry and we can stop eating the natural disaster rations for dinner.
