Aunt Bonnie made this cake for Dad McGuire’s birthday in 2011. It is simple, but very good. It also made a great cake for Adrian’s 14th birthday. Serve with ice cream, whipped cream or a glass of milk!
The recipes calls for a 9×13 pan. If you prefer use two round cake pans. Be sure to grease and flour the pans well.
Ginger cookies are a favorite of ours. This one is easily our favorite recipe for gingerbread men. We discovered the recipe in 2011 while studying Germany and this was one of the recipes we continue to make.
While they are very good plain, they are fun to decorate. It is best to decorate the day you plan to eat the cookies.
It has not snowed much this winter, so we have not had much chance to play in the snow. Andrea decided it was the perfect day to make snowball cookies when it started to snow for a short while today.
The original recipe called for 1 1/2 cups finely chopped walnuts (or pecans). We adapted our recipe to use chocolate chips in place of some of the nuts because that is Andrea’s favorite way.
While these are great cookies, they do not stay fresh long. Plan to enjoy them in a day or two, or enjoy them with your favorite hot winter drink.
I do not remember where we found this recipe, but it was one of the first candy recipes we learned how to make.
While the recipe is very easy to make, it is also easy to let the temperature get to high. Because of this, I changed our recipe to a slightly lower temperature so that the candy is pulled off the heat earlier and has less chance of being overcooked.
Use your favorite recipe for the dipping chocolate. While confectionery coating is okay, a good milk chocolate or dark chocolate makes the candy taste the best.
We discovered this candy a few years ago while browsing a candy store. Mark quickly declared it was his favorite candy ever. When looking for “sea foam”, we realized this candy comes with many different names; honeycomb candy, sponge candy, or fairy food.
For fun, we decided we needed to learn how to make his favorite treat. At first, we could not find any recipes or information about it, except in an old cookbook. However, now we can find different recipes for it in cookbooks or looking on line.
This is not a super hard recipe to make, but sometimes it turns out wonderfully and other times it is a little finicky. We have not learned why, but it is a great reason to make more.
We prefer the candy with a touch of molasses (or dark corn syrup) but it is just as good either way. However, the candy lasts longer coated in chocolate, so we highly recommend that if you want to save for longer.
One of the first recipes that Andrea “invented” on her own. She wanted chocolate chip cookies and Audrey wanted peanut butter, so she experimented and came up with these.
We have many friends with food allergies. We were looking for a good dessert recipe that we could share at potlucks that was gluten free, egg free and dairy free. These are simple cookies to make and they taste great!
I am not sure where we found this recipe. I have played with it and adapted it some to our tastes.
I was looking for a good biscotti recipe and my friend, Cheri, had the perfect one for me. This is super easy to make with many variations. The cookies store well for a few weeks too.
If desired, these cookies are firm enough to dunk in chocolate.
Many years ago, Andrea discovered “creamy puffs”. After her first taste she insisted that she wanted to learn how to make them. So, at the age of 9, Andrea learned how to make “French Profiteroles“.
Years later, Andrea still loves cream puffs and insisted that we make them to celebrate National Cream Puff Day (2 Jan).
Fill the puffs with vanilla ice cream for french profiteroles. Filling with whipped cream makes them cream puffs. Either way is wonderful!
If you want to make these gluten free, substitute the flour with your favorite gluten free flour*. They do not puff up as nicely, and they did not brown the same, but they taste great!
