Friesencold

I recently went to my friend Dena’s cookie exchange party. It was a lot of fun to have Friday night plans with some of my dearest friends and enjoy eating all kinds of different cookies and drinking yummy hot drinks. The Williams-Sonoma hot chocolate was quite amazing.

Everyone was to bring six dozen cookies and we would get to sample them all during the party and then leave with some of everyone’s cookies to take home.

I had been planning to make Gingersnaps, in honor of my name, but before I could buy all the ingredients for those, I discovered Fudge Babies. My friend Hannah who I keep talking about (and am finally linking to her blog for all those interested in reading some great material), and who was also at the cookie party, had given me a link to a blog recently with this recipe on it. The blog is called Chocolate-Covered Katie and here’s the recipe for what you’re about to see!

I made these cute little Fudge Babies earlier in the week, before the day of the cookie party, and we loved them so much that we ate them all up. I knew I had to make them again to share my excitement with my friends so I tripled the recipe and put them in mini cupcake foils on a nice platter to take to Dena’s.

You truly won’t believe how 4 ingredients – dates, walnuts, cocoa powder, and vanilla extract – can turn into something so amazing, so rich, so chocolate-y, so healthy. Hannah joked at the cookie party that she would let her kids eat them for breakfast, except she wasn’t joking. And neither am I. You have to try these. They are very easy to make and the only problem is that you will wish you had tripled the recipe (although I haven’t figured out yet how long they stay moist and rich-tasting, or if they might begin to dry out if you make too many at once and don’t eat too many at once).

It took me just under an hour to make the 75 Fudge Babies and I calculated their cost at 12 cents a piece, just because I thought it would be fun to figure out what went into making so many. And guess what! The Fudge Babies won the prize for Best-Tasting Cookie that night at the cookie party. Wow! I was so happy to know people liked them that much, and hopefully people will actually make and consume them in the (near) future too.

I really do get excited when people make nutritious choices, like when I see somebody pass by me in their car and they’re eating a piece of fruit. I just about can’t believe it, but I love it! Or when I’m walking somewhere and I see a banana peel on the ground and I think about the person who chose to eat that fruit (and then I think, wait, maybe that was me and I threw that peel out the window the other day). People sampling the grapes in the supermarket, though, is another matter altogether. I often think of saying, but never actually would, how do those pesticides taste? Because don’t we all know by now that conventially-grown grapes are one of the most pesticide-laden types of produce you can buy? I try to buy organic grapes when they are affordable, but when not, I put the conventionally-grown ones through six washes before we eat them. No joke.

Okay, that tangent is now over and we can proceed with the next picture.

The night after the cookie party, TJ and I enjoyed our own little cookie party at home. I put some of the cookies I thought TJ would like best (notice the Fudge Babies) on a pretty plate and made us some hot tea to go with them. That bread you see, that wasn’t at the cookie party at all. That’s some pumpkin bread a friend of mine made and brought to the Connections brunch on Thursday. All these eating meetings! And no end in sight this month! I knew TJ would like the pumpkin bread, especially with his chai tea, so that’s why it’s included

Finally, the S’mores are a fun little project that Bauer and I pulled out of the Arts & Crafts bin yesterday.

I had completely forgotten that I had this craft kit. My friend Amber saw these after Christmas last year at a craft store and they were very much on sale, so she got a kit for us, plus a few wooden ornaments for Bauer to paint. I was looking in the Arts & Craft bin I have stored in our closet, thinking maybe I could find some beads and some pipe cleaners for Bauer to string the beads on like he did at a friend’s house recently. Thankfully I looked in the bin when I did because I saw the S’mores kit and it would have been a bummer to find it after Christmas. The kit makes a ton of little S’mores guys so I’m thinking this will last us all month. Bauer has only made maybe 9 or 10 so far. He loves putting the carrot noses on the best. That’s my boy, the one who loves carrots!