Friday, February 22, 2013

Delicious M&M Cookies

So yesterday was a snow day and as I've said before I love to bake while its snowing outside.

Yesterday was no exception.

We had some dark chocolate m&m's on hand so I set out to find a good m&m cookie recipe.

I don't know about you, but when I try out a new recipe I'm always a little leery. I'm always worried that it won't turn out like I expect and it will be a waste of ingredients. That's why I'm pretty vigilant about reading recipe reviews when I find a new recipe online. This recipe had great reviews and seemed promising, with a few tweaks. Thankfully they turned out wonderfully so I thought I'd share the recipe with all of you.

Soft & Chewy M&M Cookies
Original Recipe {HERE}


Ingredients:
1 C. Brown Sugar (packed)
1/2 C. White Sugar
1 C. Butter (Softened)
2 Eggs
1 1/2 t. Vanilla Extract
2 1/2 C. Flour
1 t. Baking Soda
1 t. Salt
1 C. M&M's*
2 T. (heaping) Sprinkles (optional)**

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cream together butter and both sugars until fluffy & creamy. A mixer works best for this.
Beat in eggs and vanilla until completely combined.
Add flour, baking soda and salt and mix well.
Stir in M&M's and sprinkles (optional) by hand.
Let dough chill in the fridge for 10 minutes.
Drop dough by rounded teaspoon fulls onto cookie sheets.
Bake at 350 degrees for 8-12 minutes. Make sure not to over bake them. Just bake until they start to turn golden.
Allow to cool slightly before removing the cookies from the cookie sheets and letting them cool on some waxed paper or cooling racks.
This recipe should make 5-6 dozen cookies mattering on how large you make them.

*I had the dark chocolate ones on hand so that's what I used. Plus everything is better with dark chocolate right?!
**You definitely don't need to add sprinkles, but since I had some left over from Valentine's Day I thought I should try to use some up.

I only made half the recipe, because we don't need to have 5 dozen cookies sitting around. Hopefully half of a batch gets us through the weekend!

If you try these cookies out let me know how they work for you!

Hope all of you have a great weekend!

Friday, February 15, 2013

Our Valentine's Day

It's been forever since I've posted...again. I don't know if it's just from lack of inspiration to post or just the business of the ever day. Either way I'm finding it hard to take the time to sit down and concentrate long enough to write a post. So forgive my sporadicness.

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Our Valentine's Day was a fairly quiet one. It's never been a big ordeal for Nick and I, so I figured we can just make it a family centered holiday and just have fun with it. Since Evelyn is still so young we didn't do any fun Valentine's themed crafts, but we did manage to buy some valentines at the store and send them off to a few people. Evelyn's contribution was allowing me to trace her hand inside and I'm lucky I got that out of her.

As for our actual plans for the day we decided to just have a fun family dinner and make that a tradition. We had a free pizza from Papa John's so we decided to order that and have some salads. Nothing too spectacular, but I did set the table festively.



For dessert we made ice cream sundaes with some red velvet ice cream I had found at the grocery store. Evelyn had her's right after dinner, while Nick and I waited till after we had put her to bed. Poor Evelyn has either a cold or just a runny nose from teething so she's been going down for bed early lately and last night was no exception.

As far as gifts Nick and I had already exchanged gifts this past weekend. I needed him to come with while I bought his gift, because it was a new wedding ring. He's lost so much weight since we were married that his old one falls right off his finger. (Lucky him!) I had guessed what he was getting me so he just took me along to get it. It was a Keurig! I'm pretty excited, because it means more easlily making coffee once I have two little ones.


Evelyn got her little gifts on Valentine's Day though. She just got a card and some candy. Also I bought her a monkey sippy cup from Target's Valentine's Day selection. It was so adorable she kept kissing it after she took a drink, so I'd say she loved it.


All in all it was pretty nice Valentine's Day, even despite my sick little one. I'm excited to grow our family tradition more next year when Evelyn's a little older. I must say making new family traditions is one of my favorite things about having little ones. Holidays are much more fun when you're sharing it with your kiddos.

How was your Valentine's Day? Do you have any fun traditions for your family? I love to hear about it!
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