Christmas may be over, but humour such as this lives on:
With some luck, I reckon the carrot would be good to eat too!
Wishing you a fabulous post-Christmas celebration and another week of celebratory festivities to welcome the new year.
December 27, 2015
Sunday Humour: Finding Frosty
Category: Entertainment
December 25, 2015
Featured Fabulous Friday Flavours: Hedgehog Cookies
Category: Fabulous Friday Flavours
It’s Christmas, 6 more days before 2016 arrives at our door-steps and I am completely in a holiday, festive mood! With such a mood, I am in a need for indulgence. By that, I mean something sweet, something chocolatey and something nutty that would make the tummy happy and the soul all tuned-up. It reminded me of a cookie recipe Jas over at All That’s Jas posted last month on her blog – the Hedgehog Cookies!
It’s easily the most memorable, cutest home-made cookies I have ever seen and easy enough to make. It’s been etched in my mind for a while now, off and on, and I still have not attempted it yet. Mainly because I’m afraid of the consequences of not being able to stop eating them the moment I start baking them. Those are the kind of cookies that scream INDULGE! INDULGE!INDULGE! and I KNOWWWW that my brain wants my stomach to devour it!
So while fighting my inner desire for a potential addition, I thought I’d feature Jas’s wonderful creation of such festive-looking recipe for this week’s Fabulous Friday Flavours instead. These things ooze cuteness! It would be a waste not to share with the world!
Hedgehog Cookies
2015-12-03 03:47:13
Cutest cookies ever! Image credit: All That's Jas
Ingredients
- 1 1/3 cup all-purpose Flour
- 1 cup powdered Sugar
- 1 Egg
- ¾ cup Cornstarch
- 2 teaspoons Vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon Almond extract (or flavor of your choice)
- ½ cup (8 tablespoons) Butter, softened
- Pinch of Salt
- 1 cup Chocolate chips
- 1 tablespoon Oil
- Chocolate sprinkles or chopped nuts for decorating
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper or a silpat mat.
- In a medium bowl stir all ingredients except chocolate and oil; knead into smooth dough. Dust with more flour if your dough is sticky. It should be soft to touch but not sticking to your fingers.
- Tear small pieces of dough and form them into a ball. I used a measuring spoon to keep them all the same size. With your fingers, stretch one side of the ball to assume a pear shape or body of a hedgehog.
- Arrange shaped cookies in a prepared baking sheet and bake until slightly browned, about 15-20 minutes. Please note that baking time varies due to the size of your cookies and your oven. Keep your eye on them during baking; you don’t want to burn their little muzzles.
- Allow cookies to cool. Don’t worry if they’re little cracked, most all will be covered by chocolate.
- Heat the oil in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Add chocolate and stir until chocolate has completely melted. Dip the bottom of each cookie, about two-thirds up, into the melted chocolate. This is best done by holding the cookie by its “muzzle”.
- Shake off excess chocolate then roll the cookie into chocolate sprinkles or chopped nuts.
- Place cookies on waxed paper.
- Using a toothpick dipped into melted chocolate draw three small dots for eyes and nose. Let the chocolate harden. Store the cookies refrigerated in an airtight container.
- Remove from refrigerator 30 minutes before serving, to soften.
Adapted from All That's Jas
Adapted from All That's Jas
Grubbs n Critters https://grubbsncritters.com/
Here’s wishing you the sweetest and merriest Christmas!
December 21, 2015
Power of The Count
Category: Critter Stories
In the weekends, our home typically look like a bomb has just exploded. The kids’ toys are strewn everywhere across the living room – toy cars are wrapped in play dough…shreds of paper or magnetic alphabets for the white board are stuffed into any toys with holes…Lego pieces cover half the hallway with the radius of crop circles…stickers plastered all over the floor…a dozen of plastic balls along with stuffed toys are not where they should be…
In other words, a complete mess. We have found a half-eaten apple in their wooden kitchen set too! God knows how long those pieces have been left there! Eeewww.
Asking them to clean up every hour is a futile effort; they pick a couple of toys to store them back into the toy box, only to take out other things again. For that reason, we usually let the mess be for most of the day. Besides, the toys do keep them occupied for a while, so we tend to turn a blind eye at the mess during the day.
But when it comes to the final clean up before they have their evening shower, the kids drag their feet. They either took their very own sweet time or they ended up getting distracted with other things WHILE they are cleaning up, that the job is never quite done. We can repeat ourselves like a broken record telling them to pick this and that, and that would take just twice as long.
We used to ask them to help store their toys away, as a show of walk-the-talk, but mostly, we were the ones who ended clearing most of their stuff away for them. Not very ideal! I mean, they are the ones who made the mess, why should WE ask them for help when it was their mess in the first place?
Besides, why should we be the ones cleaning up after them? Time for some responsibilities, I think!
This was when I discovered the power of the count. By that I mean counting 1 to 10. And by that, when I tell the little imps that it’s time to clean up, I’ll inform them, in advance, that I’ll be counting from ONE to TEN. And, if they don’t put their toys away when I get to 10, whatever is left on the floor would be binned. And I mean it. (It happened the first time I did the count on them. I DID warn. Major shock factor, major cries. Some of their toys were binned for real and they never got them back)
Thereafter, this counting thing became quite the charm to get them on their asses to clean up. In less than a minute flat (I’ll do a 7…7 and a half…8…and a half…8 and three quarter…), the kids scurry away as they respond to my low, authoritative voice. They hurriedly scramble around the house to pick up whatever toys are on the floor and put them in their toy chests at the very moment I start counting. Depending on the area of mess coverage, I stretch out the counts a little longer
The best part about it: All I had to do was count, I didn’t even need to lift a finger! It’s like I have unlocked the scurrying gnomes!
These days, that’s all we do when we needed them to do something after having to repeat ourselves countless times. This includes things like getting to the table for their meals, putting on their shoes or going to bed. Or I’ll bin one of their favourite toys. I’ve got no remorse whatsoever binning their stuff. It’s our way of instilling the lessons of cause and effect because for every action (or non-action) there would be consequences which they may not like.
I think we’ve been generous. Next time, we’ll only count to 5.
You know what though? It’s kind of fun to watch scurrying gnomes. *evil laugh*