Baking Extravaganza (Thanks Pinterest!)

Dave's good friend, Jared, moved to the area this past week.  He was coming over on Sunday to watch the Patriot's game with Dave so I decided I would make him some yummy treats to welcome him to the area.  I got most of my cookie ideas from my Pinterest board.

A little drinking & baking with my hunny! 

 

The best sous-chef!

First I made the dough for sand dollar cookies from the recipe I found here since it had to be refrigerated for at least 2 hours (I ended up refrigerating it over night.)  Next it was onto the pumpkin snicker-doodle cookies.  This dough needed to refrigerate for at least an hour so while the dough was cooling, I decided to whip up a batch of classic chocolate chip cookies.  Dave was a tremendous help throughout the whole process by measuring out ingredients, cleaning up after me and keeping me company.  It was such a fun night of baking together.  Once we were done with the chocolate chip cookies, it was time to bake the pumpkin snicker-doodle cookies.  Before I could put them in the oven, I had to roll the dough into little balls and dip the balls into a cinnamon sugar mixture.  After that, I took a small wine glass and rinsed the rim with water then dipped the rim into the sugar mixture.  I took the bottom of the glass and pressed down on the dough to form flat cookies.  Once I finished this process it was time to put the cookies in the oven.  The cookies made our home smell like fall...it was fabulous. 

Flattening the pumpkin cookies

Pre-bake

Delicious pumpkin snicker-doodle cookies

Sunday morning we finished making the sand dollar cookies.  These cookies were not the easiest cookies to make because it involved trying to find the perfect almond shapes and pressing them into the cookie deep enough that they would stay put but not hard enough that they would break.  The sand dollar cookies tasted ok, but I prefer my Martha Stewart snicker-doodles any day!

Sand dollar cookies - NOT worth the effort! :)

Jared's goodies! :)

The next task for the cookies was how was I going to give them to Jared.  I had seen on Pinterest a wrapped Pringles jar to put your baked cookies in.  I picked up some wrapping paper from The Container Store, along with some tins and gift tags.  I bought some Pringles, something we never have in the house, took out the Pringles and put them in a Ziploc bag and cleaned out the Pringles container.  After I dried it, I wrapped it with wrapping paper, made a gift tag and tied it onto the container.  I put the other cookies in separate tins that we also picked up at the Container Store.  It was such a fun project that I got to do with my husband.  I hope Jared enjoys his cookies and his new home!