Memorial Day Gooey Goody

Happy Memorial Day everyone!

I don't know about you, but it's been a great weekend filled with family, food, and fun. I think I'm pretty pooped, and so is Hurley as he's passed out while I'm typing this.

I forgot to tell you guys that Hurley turned one on the 26th! I can't believe my baby is already one! Seriously, if I get this sentimental about my puppy, what in the world kind of wreck am I going to be when I am a mom to human babies! 

Anyway, I know that Maggie just posted a cookie recipe (which I am dying to try-aren't you?! I mean come on...how can you get much better than Nutella cookies?!), but I have to give you a recipe that has just made it's way into my family's heart and is going to stay for a while!

Maggie actually made them for the dessert portion of our house tour, and that's when my sister, mom, and I fell in love. She got them originally from Iowa Girl Eats website, and it's also posted on our good friend's blog Eating, Exploring & Enjoying. Both have awesome pictures (sorry, I didn't take the time to take pics), so please head on over to one of those sites to check out the pics!

Anyway, I decided to make them for an extended family get together this weekend, and I kid you not they were gone in like seconds. I was glad I had doubled the recipe!

Here's the recipe (taken from Iowa Girl Eats) with my added comments:

Caramel Filled Chocolate Cookies 

Yield: 24 cookies (I would recommend at least doubling the recipe, if not more!)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons cocoa powder
24 rolos
1/4 cup granulated sugar

Directions:
1. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Cream butter and sugars until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla then mix until combined.
2. In a separate bowl mix flour, baking soda, salt & cocoa powder. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients in three batches, mixing well between each batch. Chill dough for 1 hour in the fridge or 20-30 minutes in the freezer. (I had to keep my dough longer in the freezer...basically you just need to get it cold enough so that it's easy to work with, otherwise it's so sticky it's impossible to wrap around the Rolos!)
3. Scoop out ~1 Tablespoon dough and wrap it around a Rolo candy (I rolled it again to work it back into a ball, which kept it together nicely and made rolling in the sugar easier). Roll dough in sugar and place on a baking sheet. Bake for 8 minutes, rotating pan half way through. Enjoy!


Seriously, this recipe is so simple, yet you feel like you've really made something fancy with the gooey caramel on the inside! Let me know if you decide to try them (you should).    :)

That's a Wrap.

So the wrapping party was a success!  And by that, I mean we ate sugar cookies to our hearts content, rocked out to Winter Wonderland and wrapped *almost* all of our gifts.  A snow storm came through on Saturday but it didn't get us down and by 7:30pm we were surrounded by bows, ribbon and wrapping paper with one deliriously happy kitty snacking on it all.

The party was easy to prepare for since my house was already decorated for Christmas and I just had to haul out my wrapping supplies a few minutes before the girls got here.  I made a few snacks and decided to focus most of my "party planning efforts" into some yummy sugar cookies.

My Aunt gave me an amazing recipe in March that I had been begging her to give me for nearly 5 years.  She would cut off my fingers if I shared it on here, so I found another recipe that's almost as good (I've made these before).  The key to awesome sugar cookies is not rolling them out too thin and then making sure to not over bake them so you keep them nice and soft.  You never want them to get brown or crispy.

Here's my decorating station, it's not that exciting but ya know:

I lined up some dip-bowls with sprinkles for easy access. I'm not afraid to say I picked up a container of cream cheese frosting; it's easy to mix up but when you're striving to make things simple you have to know your boundaries.  Right?  Anyway, it glided on the cookies and was wonderfully tasty.

By the way, you gotta get the gel food coloring.  Colors have never been so vivid, so fabulous, so edible!  No more "red" frosting that looks pink instead.  You'll love it.

I like to use cookie cutters as "stencils" to decorate.  

Trader Joe's Mac N' Cheese Balls and fudge too- yum!

Now, onto the fun part, the actual party! The supply stash (probably only half of what we had/brought): 

Wrapping paper, bows, embellishments, tape scissors, bags, tissue, and my personal favorite this year: tulle.  It works great instead of ribbons and bows and a roll of it will adorn gifts-a-plenty. This is where you pretend that I took a picture of one of the gifts I used tulle on, so you could see an example. Sorry!  

 The beautiful Hannah after her wrapping was done.  I surprised her with some peppermint coffee:)

The beautiful Melissa displaying one of her gifts.  

Sorry I didn't get any "in progress shots", I was busy;) And of course there's no Before and Afters 'cause a lot of you cute people reading are on the receiving end of the gifts and we wouldn't want you to see what you're gettin'.  Plus, we forgot to group all the wrapped gifts together and take a shot- whoops!  Still tryin' to get this blog thing down, he he.

I invited 5-6 people but a lot couldn't make it because they hadn't done shopping yet.  Maybe next year:)  It is best when the party is small because each person takes up so much space.  Unless you have a HUGE house or don't mind having people in your bedroom, on average, about 4 people is good to have over.  

So, we chatted, we wrapped, we laughed and we made one of the biggest tasks of the holiday season as easy as that.