Awww, SNAP.

Confession: 

My husband made these.

To be fair, I helped dip them in the sugar.

I've got mad skillz.

One day he decided he reeeeeallly wanted ginger snaps, and he got to work. 

Now he's perfected his recipe and his method. 

I request them all the time, and we have been known to "pay" my parents for watching our kiddos with these.

People--these are AMAZING.

No joke. 

I could eat them ALL. DAY. LONG.

And I have.

Today, in fact.

I'll lose that baby weight another day.

*cough*

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup packed brown sugar

3/4 cup shortening

1/4 cup molasses

1 large egg

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp salt

Granulated Sugar

DIRECTIONS:

1. Heat oven to 375.

2. Beat brown sugar, shortening, molasses, and egg in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed, or mix with spoon. Stir in remaining ingredients except granulated sugar.

3. Lightly grease cookie sheet with shortening.

4. Shape dough into balls--about 1 inch in diameter. Dip tops into granulated sugar. Place balls, sugared sides up, about 3 inches apart on cookie sheet.

5. Bake 9 to 12 minutes or just until set. Immediately remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. 

Note: If you eat them warm, they will seem slightly undercooked in the middle. But as they cool, you get that wonderful dense and chewy middle, with a firm, not-quite-crunchy outside. And they are even better the next day.

HOLY YUM.

Makes about 2 dozen.

What are you waiting for!?

GO PREHEAT THOSE OVENS!

Rainbow Apple Snacks

Looking for something easy and yummy to bait your leprechaun traps this year?  Or maybe you have some ravenous lasses and/or laddies looking for something to devour.

Or perhaps, like me, you got your hands on a whole box of inexpensive apples, wanted to use them, and aren't good at pies. 

So we pulled out our nifty peeler-corer and all took turns slicing up apples.  We left the peels on, because these snacks need all the nutrition they can get!  It was very exciting, this apple slicing business.  If you have never eaten apples sliced that thin and curly, my friends, you need to try them.  It ups the deliciousness factor.  We ate half of what we sliced before we ever dried them!  But I'm pretty sure that 6 really tiny apples will fill up one tray.  Maybe 4 small apples from the grocery store.

 Next, some simple Jell-O will transform your apples into a rainbow! It doesn't take much--just sprinkle it on as much or little as you'd like.  If desired, you can just start chowing down now.  They are super yummy as is.

Or you can toss them in the oven heated to 170 degrees for 8.5 hours and have colorful, flavored apple chips.  This picture almost didn't make it to you, folks, because these apples were devoured in about 5 minutes.

Then we made more, but all blue (we do a lot of blue around here), and baked for 7 hours.  I like my apple chips a bit chewy.  They also turned out delicious.  Mmmmm.  And Jell-O isn't that bad for you, right?  I consider these quite healthy.

I think we need a dehydrator, because these suckers are going to become regulars!

Look Whooooo Just Turned Two!

My baby's 2nd birthday was two days before my husband's 30th--so we HAD to have a shindig! I hadn't ever worked with fondant, but I wanted to give it a try. Turns out it's not as tricky as I was afraid of--it's just super yummy play doh!!

I snagged some of these from Amazon: Cutie Cupcake Summer Cookie Cutter Variety Set, which I kind of jumped up and down about, becomes it comes with FOUR sets!! I whipped up a batch of marshmallow fondant all by myself, and this is how it turned out: 

Hah! Can you believe it?  I made those!  And if I can do it, I'm telling you, anyone can!!

And when you add the hubster's favorite super chocolate cake from Costco, plus a pile of pizza, everybody was happy!





*The link to the fondant cutters is an affiliate link.

Pink or Blue? Gluten Free Gender Reveal Party

We had some exciting news this Autumn:

When you have three kids and all of them are boys, the stakes become pretty high for the gender of number 4.

Will. THIS ONE. Be a GIRL?!?

So I really wanted to throw a party to reveal whether baby number 4 is a boy or girl!

Party food is not my forte (that would be Jamie), but I decided to try reeeeally hard this time. And everything but the pretzels were gluten free so that everyone could partake!

We had chocolate dipped rice krispy treats, pink lemonade bars (via, adapted with a gluten free flour mix via), swirled sugar cookies (adapted via), and a really yummy mix with chocolate covered pretzels, popcorn, and M&Ms. 

Let's have another look at that deliciousness, because it turned out to be my favorite thing on the table.
Second were probably those lemonade bars, which are truly addicting.  I used a gluten free recipe from this book, and it turns out the thick swirl cookies needed waaay less cooking time but it was hard to tell with the color swirls.  They were a bit overcooked--beware!

And Cupcakes (cake via. BEST. GF. CAKE. EVER. and frosting via), and skinny deviled eggs (via).

We all cast our votes--baby boy or girl?!?  And then it was the moment of truth: 

I know it's hard to see, but that is most definitely BLUE silly string coming out of those canisters!

So everybody put your wallets away--I know you were all planning on sending me adorable baby girl clothes--but I've got everything under control.

I thought I'd be a little bit disappointed, but aren't babies incredible?  I am entirely full of excitement to welcome baby boy #4!  Life is about to get crazy around here!--Well, you know.  Like it isn't already!