Wordless Wednesday

Ok…I am so cheating….here are my pics of the Molasses Cookies for Tuesdays with Dorie.  Sorry!

These are AMAZING…I will be making these frequently!  Aiden really loves them.

Take Care,
Tania
Love Big, Bake Often

At a loss of words

I am sorry friends, I truly have nothing to say today. I have been living in my head the past couple days and am trying to dig my way out. I will be back with bells on tomorrow....and hope to post a Wednesday with Dorie....if I can remember to take some pics in the morning as it is WAY to dark when I get home at night!

Take Care,
Tania
Love Big Bake Often

Monkey Monday

While paring through some pictures I stumbled across this video of my three “men” from last November.  I cannot believe this was a year ago. 

 

Take Care,

Tania
Love Big, Bake Often

Lavender Sugar Cookies

Let me just start off by apologizing for the lack of pictures with this post.  I had the camera out at the book fair yesterday and the batteries ran out.  And of course today while out shopping I knew that there was one thing that I was forgetting, and for the life of me couldn’t remember and of course those were it.  And once home and remembered right away, I refused to go back out as Sunday’s are a very lazy day for me these days.

So I have a recipe for you…and they turned out really great.  But no pretty pictures of cookies surrounded by lovely purple lavender. You will just have to picture them.  Perfect circles of yummy goodness, coated in sugar with bits of fragrant lavender peeking through the dough.  Can you see it?

Here is the recipe, I kind of adapted from Susan, at She’s Becoming Doughmesstic’s, Sugar Cookie Recipe.

Lavender Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/4 cup cream cheese, softened

1 cups white sugar

2 eggs

3/4 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoons baking powder

1 tsp Lavender

In mixer, cream together butter, cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Add in eggs and vanilla, beating until smooth. Mix in the flour, baking powder, and lavender until incorporated. Cover and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).  Then roll tbsps of dough into balls, coat in sugar, and flatten balls with the bottom of a glass.  Bake at 390F for about 10 minutes.  Transfer to a rack to cool….pour yourself a cup of tea and enjoy!

They are fantastic.  And soon I will show you a picture of them….I promise!

Take Care,

Tania

Love Big, Bake Often

 

Eggnog French Toast

Last week I was on an Eggnog high….the scones I made were stellar, so I continued with the Eggnog and made some Eggnog French Toast. And we LOVED it…the boys both asked for seconds and Jakob asked for some later in the day (sadly it was all gone!).

Look at this….who wouldn’t want to eat it?!?

Ok, so it’s not easy to take a “good” picture of baked French Toast.  But it does look yummy, right?

It is easy to make, I use this recipe from Aimee, at Under the High Chair, as a basis for all the French Toasts I have been making.

This is what I did for this one:

Eggnog Baked French Toast

4 – 5 cups stale or day old French Bread (or Baguette)

4 Eggs

200 mls Eggnog

50 mls Skim Milk

1 tsp Vanilla

1 tbsp Cinnamon

Directions:

Cut up French Bread and spread out in a buttered casserole dish.  Mix together all other ingredients and pour over bread.  Push the bread into the liquid to ensure even soaking up of all the eggnog goodness.

Cover the casserole dish with Saran wrap and put in fridge overnight.  In the morning pull out the dish, preheat the oven to 350F.  Bake at 350F for 35 – 45 minutes until it is brown and toasty and the eggs are set. If it starts to brown too soon cover with foil and continue until eggs are set.

Then pull out this….

And enjoy!

Take Care,

Tania

Love Big, Bake Often

 

I have two words for you….

Chocolate Bread!

That’s it.  Stay tuned!

Take Care,
Tania
Love Big, Bake Often

 

Whining…..It Doesn’t change Anything!

 

I absolutely HATE whining.  It is really one of the biggest button pushers for me. It can send me into parenting “fit” in seconds flat….it wears on my nerves.  You get what I mean!

Jakob is the King of whiners…..he should have a crown! Seriously.  Those of you who have spent time with him and/or heard stories about him know what I am talking about.  He whines about anything and sometimes everything.  And the one thing that I continuously tell him is this…..”whining doesn’t change anything!”  Whining will not make me suddenly say “Yes” to eating candy with breakfast.  Whining will not make me agree to watching more TV after I have told you that was it.  Whining will not make me clean up your mess for you.  It doesn’t change anything!  It makes it WORSE!  It makes me want to pull out my hair and rock in a corner!  

I don’t understand where whining comes from, is it genetic?  Is there a switch that is flipped when children hit a certain age that programs them to whine?  Is there some older child that pulls yours aside at the playground and teaches them the technique?  I certainly didn’t teach him.  And now I am worried that he is whispering in Aiden’s ear about whining. 

Whining is hopefully a habit that he will soon outgrow, and I know I am probably dreaming, but I hope everyday to get through it without just one whining session.

But on to me……and my attempt to get through a year without Jason and without whining.  I hear from people how brave I am going through this and how tough it must be, and it makes me think.  Should I be complaining more?  Will that change anything?  No…as I said before….whining doesn’t change anything.  It goes for adults too. I am not only being strong for me, I am trying to be strong for my husband, for my boys.  It’s important to keep it in perspective. It’s not forever, the happier we are going through it - the easier it will be.  Now don’t get me wrong….I miss Jason every day and would be super happy if they called me and told me he was coming home tomorrow, but that probably wont happen so I wont sit around holding my breath, whining about the situation.  As my friend, Susan, use to tell me….I will “pull on my big girl panties and drive on!”

And that is my opinion on whining….for everyone.

Take Care,
Tania
Love Big, Bake Often