Carrot Cake Cookies

Oh my gosh, these cookies are soooo yummy! If you like carrot cake, then these are the cookies for you! Two Christmas’ ago, I found a recipe in a food magazine that was (surprisingly) from an ad with a recipe for sugar cookies that used cake mix. I decided to make those cookies and put them in my Christmas tins along with the other goodies. The cookies were fabulous and everything I wanted them to be, soft, chewy, not too sweet...they were perfect. However, when next Christmas rolled around the recipe was nowhere to be found. You can only imagine my disappointment. I looked on the website with hopes that I would find the recipe and few other places online. But alas, no luck.

However, after joining the wonderful world of Pinterest I had remembered how easy and scrumptious these cake cookies were to eat. So I looked up a recipe where you could use ANY cake mix you wanted and make cookies with them. Though this recipe is not the EXACT recipe I had before, it is just as good!

I know many people like to make cookies from scratch, but I have yet to master the art of the soft-chewy-cakey cookies from scratch. Plus these cookies are so amazingly easy that if I want a super soft and chewy cookie (which is most the time) I will just use this recipe! :)

I hope you all enjoy these cookies as much as my family and I have! 

Mixing mixing!!!

Our beautiful dough after it has come together. 

I measured my cookies into slightly heaping Tablespoons. 

After they were all done. How wonderful are those? I will admit they are not the most beautiful cookies ever made but holy moley they are delicious!

 Carrot Cake Cookies

(Recipe adapted from Sweet Sugar Belle)

1 box Carrot Cake mix
1 stick butter, ( or 1/2 cup) room temperature (I used salted because I never have unsalted in my house)
2 eggs
2 TBS flour
1-2 teas. vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Mix butter, eggs and vanilla until well combined. After add in the 2 tablespoons of flour the begin adding in cake mix until all is well combined. You may need to sift in the flour and cake mix. 

3. Place slightly heaped tablespoon sized cookies on prepared baking sheets, and bake for 10-12 minutes (maybe less or more depending on your oven). Remember not to over cook or they will turn out crispy. When removing from oven, leave the cookies on the baking sheets for about 7-10 minutes. 

4. Remove cookies from baking sheets and place on cooling rack. Top with cream cheese icing as I did, with your preferred frosting, or enjoy without any! They are definitely good enough! 

Enjoy!!!  


Tips 

- When I first made these cookies I didn't sift the flour in and didn't have a mixer with me, so it was much harder to make sure there were no clumps of cake mix in the dough. I would recommend sifting the cake mix into the wet ingredients.   

Frozen Peanut Butter Pie

It’s good to be back! Let me tell you this is the perfect recipe to come back with a BANG! It is seriously one of the best desserts I’ve had. I first made this back in the beginning of February for my boyfriend’s birthday. I'm always trying out new baking recipes but I was so excited to make something special doing what I love, for the person I love.

About Mid-January I began looking for “THE” recipe that would be perfect for his birthday dessert. One thing I knew to look for that would make it the right dessert was peanut butter cups. Mmmm... peanut butter cups, you can’t go wrong with peanut butter and chocolate. Well, you can’t go wrong with chocolate and anything in my opinion. SO THE SEARCH BEGAN!!! I went to trusty ol’ Pinterest (you can follow me here :)) there I found this absolutely wonderful; and delicious recipe that comes together so beautifully (you’ll see later). This Frozen Peanut Butter Pie recipe was “THE” recipe I was looking for.

The texture of this “pie” is more like ice cream cake than pie, and it is so good! I didn’t meet one out of the eleven people who tried it that had anything to say that wasn’t good about this pie. This is one you guys HAVE to try. PLUS, it’s super easy and takes no time to assemble. My kind of dessert. I hope you all enjoy this recipe as much as we have!! :) 

Plus when I made this it turned out so beautifully! I was so proud of it, to date this pie is the most beautiful dessert I’ve made! :) 

How gorgeous is that?


Frozen Peanut Butter Pie
(Recipe adapted from Bakers Royale)

24 oreo cookies, processed into fine crumbs
4 TBS butter, melted
3 cups whipped cream, homemade or cool whip
¾ cup creamy peanut butter
½ cup powdered sugar
2 cups crushed peanut butter cups, 1 cup for filling other cup for garnish, I used Reeses Peanut Butter Cups
semisweet chocolate chips if you desire for garnish

1. Oreo Crust:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place oreos into food processor and pulse until the cookies become fine crumbs. In a bowl mix together melted butter and crumbs until well combined. Press crumbs into a springform pan. Bake for 7-10 minutes.

2. Peanut Butter Filling:
Place peanut butter and powdered sugar into small pan over low heat and stir together until combined and peanut butter is melted. Set aside the peanut butter mixture and cool for 5-10 minutes. If using homemade whipped cream prepare now. When peanut butter is cooled enough gently fold it into the whipped cream. When well combined, again gently fold in 1 cup of crushed peanut butter cups. Pour mixture into prepared cooled crust and place in freezer and freeze for 3 hours or overnight. You can garnish this pie anyway you want. I chose to use the other cup of peanut butter cups for decorating the top of it. I also added melted semisweet chocolate.

TIPS:

- I decorated my pie with extra peanut butter cups and semisweet chocolate. As you can see above in the picture I placed the peanut butter cups around the edges and then went over them with the semisweet chocolate. After I wrote his name in chocolate! :) 

- If you do not have a non-stick spring form pan you will need to prepare it. I had a non-stick pan but I still added parchment paper to the bottom of the pan and lightly sprayed the sides just to be cautious. You can also use smaller personal sized ramekins.

- Do not cook the crust for more than 10 minutes. I cooked my crust too long because I had never done an oreo crust before and mine ended up hard, thankfully it was so delicious nobody seemed to mind :)

- To make this even easier you could buy an already prepared oreo pie crust to replace the homemade one. The same goes for the whip cream, I wanted to do homemade whip cream but you could use 3 cups of cool whip as well.

- I always taste things to make sure the finished product is how I want it to be. When I tasted the whipped cream mixture after I added everything it seemed a little sweet which worried me but my gut told me to just put it in the freezer and after when everything was frozen it was PERFECT! Not too sweet at all.

- The original recipe called for unsalted butter, however I didn't have any so I just used salted and it turned out fine.

- If you make your own whip cream don’t forget to add sugar and a touch of vanilla! :) 

Enjoy!!! 

Beautiful Snowflake Decorations

You don't even know how excited I am that it's the holiday season!!! Oh how I love Christmas!!! It is most definitely one of my favorite seasons. The family time I get to spend, that special feeling in the air of warm-hearted-ness, all the yummy smells, baking, decorations, crafting, christmas movies.....ahh.....

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I cannot tell you how pleased with how these Christmas Snowflake Decorations turned out! I was cruising around and Pinterest and became inspired to do a fix up! I still now can’t believe how these turned out! Plus they only cost about $10 for everything! : )

Every year during Christmas time I LOVE going over to my best-friend’s house because her Mom always goes full out with the Christmas decorations. I love walking into their house and Christmas is seen all around. My friend and I always say that Christmas has puked in her house, hehehe. Every year when her Mom completely finishes decorating she texts me and says “It’s official, Christmas has puked in my house”. Ah….Okay getting to the point of the story! : )

Last Christmas while I was at her house, her Mom had all these adorable decorations and I continued to point out all the ones I thought were cute. The next week when I returned to visit she made a trip to the store and picked of multiple decorations for me to take home and decorate my house with! She’s so sweet! One of the best “otha momma’s” I’ve ever had! : ) Out of the many decorations she bought me, there were four specific decorations that I decided to “fix-up”. Four beautiful snowflake decorations. If not for Pinterest sharing all those beautifully creative people’s ideas I may have never come up with this idea!Oh Pinterest how I love you! Hehe.

So let's do this thing!

You will need:

- 4 giant plastic snowflakes (found at my local Dollar Tree)

- 1 can of white spray paint

- 1 can of spray glitter (I bought white and should have bought silver, so I recommend buying the silver if you do this!)

Old newspaper to spray snowflakes on

- If you don’t want to use the spray glitter or want more glitter do what I did and use either tacky glue mixed with a bit of water or Mod Podge and sprinkle the sparkles onto the snowflakes. If it's to cold and gloomy outside I'm sure something white acrylic paint would work just as well! : )

These snowflakes are beautiful without all the extra but I really wanted to take them the extra mile!

When the weather is nice enough, lay out some old newspaper outside to spray paint the snowflakes on. Spray one side and wait until dry, when one side is dry flip it over and spray the other side. Or you an decide after you’ve sprayed one side flip it over the other side before you spray it looks like it’s ice-y. However, I sprayed both sides.

When the second side has dried take the glitter spray and spray the side facing up until you are satisfied with the amount of glitter. Once again flip and repeat with the glitter spray.

Like I said above, I bought the wrong color of glitter spray so even though it was really beautiful but subtle, I plan on hanging these from my ceiling and wanted them to be noticeably sparkle-y. So we continue on!

When everything is dry bring the snowflakes inside and clear a space off on your table! Or, whatever workspace you choose. : ) Lay down enough newspaper to make sure you don’t muck up your table and place the snowflakes on top. On one side paint the surface with Mod Podge or tacky glue mixed with a bit of water. You may have to split the gluing into multiple parts since the snowflakes are large and you want everything to stick as good as the rest. After painting the glue onto the snowflake sprinkle with glitter. I used silver glitter but I think plain white glitter would be really pretty as well. Really any color would be very pretty, and you can use fine glitter or regular glitter. The possibilities are endless!!!! : ) After one side of glitter has dried flip over and do the same to the opposite side. When the snowflake is dry you’re ready to hang it on your wall or as I plan from my ceiling!

 Add glue and glitter....

 All done!!!!

I hope you guys try this out! Let me know how it went for you and what you did! I would love to hear!

  

Merry Christmas and happy crafting!!!