A Good Recipe (I hope)

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 package (8 oz) lite cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cups packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup canned solid pack pumpkin (or homemade puree)
• 1 egg
• Red, Yellow and Green food colors, optional
• 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips, 12 oz package
• 3 cups flour
• 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 3 tablespoons flour

Method:

Beat together softened butter, white sugar and packed brown sugar. Stir in vanilla, pumpkin, egg and a couple drops each red and yellow food color (enough to make cookie dough orange); stir in chocolate chips. Add 3 cups flour, pumpkin pie spice, salt and baking powder; stir to thoroughly mix. Remove approximately 1/2 to 2/3 cup cookie dough and set aside. Roll remaining cookie dough out between two sheets of lightly floured wax paper or parchment paper into a 12x15x1/4 inch rectangle. Freeze dough while preparing cream cheese filling.

Knead a couple drops green food color into reserved 1/2-cup cookie dough. Roll dough into approximately 36 small marble size balls, refrigerate/freeze until ready to use.

Beat cream cheese until smooth; add powdered sugar and 3 tablespoons of flour; beat until smooth and creamy. Remove cookie dough from freezer; peel off top parchment paper; spread prepared cream cheese over 2/3 the width of the rectangle (keep cream cheese on one side of dough and spread out to both ends). Using the parchment paper to carefully lift, roll cookie into a log, starting on the long cream cheese side (jelly roll fashion with cream cheese in center). Wrap log in parchment, return to freezer for 2-3 hours, preferable overnight (or until stiff).

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray cookie sheet with non-stick spray or line cookie sheet with parchment paper. Remove cookie dough from freezer, remove parchment wrap, cut into 1/4 to 3/8-inch thick slices; place on prepared baking sheet. Place a green marble size piece of dough at the top of each cookie and slightly flatten to form a stem. Bake about 12-13 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool cookies on rack. Enjoy with a glass of cold milk.

Makes approximately 3 dozen cookies

* NOTE: Pumpkin Pie spice may be replaced with mixture of 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ginger, 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg, 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves.

This is a recipe I saw on a Talk-type show on KSL Friday (I didn't have school that day.) I told Steve about it and he wanted the recipe, so I thought others might like it as well. I want to try making a gluten-free version with our left-over Halloween pumpkins.

Sam Katz NOT for Mayor 1

Mischief

I was in the kitchen cooking. Things got quiet. Too quiet. This is what I found in the living room when I went to see what the girl was up to.

I asked Eliza to make a face that showed how she felt about the mess she made. This is her face:

Pretty sly.
I made her clean it up.

Some Photos

Watching a movie with all her inanimate friends.

Eliza likes to request that I make pop ups for her. They are tricky to improvise, but here they are from the other day.

And here she is passed out on the floor after school a couple weeks ago.

Flame

Eliza's drawings are improving. It's getting easy to tell when she's just scribbling, and when she's actually drawing something. So when I saw this drawing today, I had to ask her about it.

She told me excitedly, "It's that fire thing!"
"Fire thing...?"
"Yeah! From that art museum!"
We had gone to the art museum for the first time earlier in the week and seen this Dale Chihuly piece in the lobby:

Pretty great.

Statue

Eliza's new game is pretending to be a statue. She stands on her stepstool and holds perfectly still, and then suddenly runs away giggling.

Flower Girl