blog birthday!

Today is my blog's one year anniversary since its creation last December 26th.  For this celebration I invited a few friends over to Julian's house to eat some treats.  I would have liked to have put more time and effort into this occassion, but my family was coming home from Pacific Grove, so I had approximately two hours to shop, prep and prepare everything for my party.  So I decided to go with crescent rolls, pizza sticks, and two different types of cookie dough.  To make things easier for myself and to create a diversity of cookies, I separated a cookie recipe that produces a lot of dough into four quadrants, mixing in different types of chocolate chips and candies. 

Cream Cheese Crecsent Rolls
This recipe I first experienced at Costco via samples.  I thought it was really good, and its taste resembled a warm and soft bagel filled with cream cheese.
Ingredients:
2 cans (8oz) crescent rolls
1/2 block of cream cheese
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. Unroll crescent rolls, and spread desired amount of cream cheese in the center of each roll.  Then proceed to roll up crescents as you normally would.
3. Bake for 11-13 minutes, or until nice and golden brown.

Pigs in a Blanket
Ingredients:
1 package (of 8) hot dogs
2 cans (80z) crescent rolls
Directions:
1. Heat oven to 375°F. Cut hot dogs in half.
2. Separate dough into triangles. Wrap dough triangle around each hot dog. Place on ungreased cookie sheet.
3. Bake at  375°F for 12 to 15 minutes or until golden brown.



Pizza Sticks
With these I kind of winged it. My first intention was to make a whole pepperoni pizza, but the dough would not cooperate. Instead it unrolled with holes, so I decided to make pieces of pizza, and call it pizza sticks. I used 1 can of pillsbury refrigerated dough, some tomato sauce, some mozzarella, and a few pepperonis. The outcome was slightly doughy pizza sticks. Satisfying enough to be eaten up, but I might have made some changes if I were to make these again.




Holiday Funfetti Cookies
from Pillsbury
I have never made funfetti cookies with frosting because I always find the cookies themselves to be extremely sweet.  However, to make the cookies more festive and presentable, I decided to cover them with frosting.  These turned out similar to the "lard" cookies you can buy in the supermarkets.
Ingredients:
1 box Funfetti cake mix
1/3 cup oil
2 eggs
1/2 (15.6 oz) can Holiday Funfetti frosting
Directions:
1. Heat oven to 375°F. In large bowl, combine cake mix, oil and eggs; stir with spoon until thoroughly moistened. Shape dough into 1-inch balls; place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. With bottom of glass dipped in flour, flatten to 1/4-inch thickness.
2. Bake at 375°F. for 6 to 8 minutes or until edges are light golden brown. Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheets.
3. Spread frosting over warm cookies. Immediately sprinkle each with candy bits from frosting. Let frosting set before storing. Store in tightly covered container.



Four Kinds of Cookies
For the base of this dough, I used the NYT cookie because it produces a large quantity of dough

(White Chocolate Chip)


(Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chip)

(M&M)

(Butterfinger)
NYT Cookie dough
adopted from Ezra Pound Cake
Ingredients:
2 cups minus 2 tablespoons AP flour
1 2/3 cups  AP flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) light brown sugar
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (8 ounces) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
Mix-ins


Directions:
1. Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.

2. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Separate dough into four sections and add desired mix-ins for each.  Refrigerate for an hour or so.

3. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.

4. Scoop 6 3 1/2-ounce mounds of dough (about 1/3 cup) onto baking sheet, making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie. Bake until golden brown but still soft, about 13 minutes. Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day.