Chocolate Caramel Cookies

Here is a new recipe that I am so excited to share because it is so easy and so delicious that if you like chocolate and caramel you will love it. A couple weeks before Christmas I went into a cooking slump everything I made was a flop, I even managed to botch Rice Krispie treats.  So being totally depressed but needing to make a batch of Christmas treats for a good friend, my mom came to my rescue with the following recipe. She received it from a friend at school who swore that these cookies were fool proof and sure enough they are and super delicious as well.

Chocolate Caramel Cookies

1 Box Devils Food Cake Mix
2 Eggs
1/4 Cup Oil
1 Bag Rolo Candy
Sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix together cake mix, eggs, and oil.  Roll cookies into balls with a rolo in the middle and then roll balls in sugar.  Bake for 8 to 10 minutes.  Do not make a double batch because they will not mix.

Enjoy!

Recipe Of The Week: Play Doh

So for my new recipe this week I thought I would try making Play Doh, and mom if your reading this,you can stop laughing now.  Okay, so after all the months of endless holiday cooking and baking I really needed to try something low key and also I really needed something to entertain Cash today since he didn't have preschool.  So we tackled Play Doh, it is my lovely Aunt Eileen's recipe and is on page 391 of the family cookbook and it is an awesome recipe.  My kids helped make it and they had so much fun, it turned out great and was super easy but, you know with me cooking there had to be at least one minor recipe malfunction, because that's just how recipes seem to roll at my house.

For starters I have two kids who refuse to share anything. One boy who refuses to touch anything pink, and a girl who refuses to touch anything blue. So I knew we would never be able to reach a compromise on the color of the dough.  So I thought I would just make two batches and then realized I didn't have two cups of salt.  So now what, okay I would make one batch and then divide it, and then color it. This way I could have one blue and one pink and everybody would be happy!  I think this was a very important direction to follow: Add the color to the water, which now I must add could be a really critical step if you don't want your hands to turn the color of the dough your mixing.  We ended up with both batches turning out great and even though my hands look like pink and blue Easter eggs, nobody cried and it worked so that's what I call a success!

Making pay doh gingy men

Cash making an army of gingy men

Say cheese!

Showing little sister how it's done, what a helper!

Cissy making giant and hearts and now giant gingy men

We love our play doh!

New Years Resolutions & New Recipes

So last year when I was working on the cookbook, I cooked and cooked and did mention that I COOKED a lot.  So many recipes I had to actually cook because there wasn't an ingredient list or something was missing like the cooking temperature or time.  So I would cook them and try to recreate them as best I could, while this might be simple for lot of cooks at the time I was still what I would call a cooking novice.  We tried so many new recipes, it was really a cooking adventure for our family. Towards the end of the cookbook I had to fill 400 pages so I was frantically trying to get new recipes because I had to fill up pages in the book and I wanted to make sure any recipe with my name on it, I had cooked and it was good.  While it was a lot of work, it was a lot of fun I really pushed myself and my cooking abilities and while I had failures the success outnumbered them. 

So as I was writing my New Years Resolutions this year and I vowed that none would have anything to do with weight loss, because dieting for the first week in January is never successful for me and I hate setting myself up for failure, I am way to competitive for that.  I thought back to last year and cooking new recipes and how much I learned and enjoyed cooking and eating new foods.  Now Mike could eat the same five or six meals each week for the rest of his life and I think it is good for him to try new things too.  I am always thinking of others! So this year I am going to try a recipe a week, something different that I haven't tried or haven't made forever. And to keep myself honest or better yet to keep track of what works and doesn't work I am going to blog about it, now Guymon family I am adding you all on here as administrators so feel free to blog your recipe adventures with me!  In the hope that as we get closer to the family reunion this year I can simply look back at the blog and have some ideas of how to put together the new mini cookbook we are creating.

Who Is Crazy Enough to Write A Cookbook Anyway?

Well I guess the answer to that question is me! Last year I decided to tackle what I thought would be just a little project, because "I can type really fast" and I desperately needed some of my mom's recipes that she wasn't sharing and the good news is that I actually finished it and the bad new is it almost killed me (not really but, very close.)  And now a year later, with typo's and lot's of new recipes that I wish were included or would be awesome if they were added you may be asking yourself if I am going to do another cookbook and the answer is NO WAY!  Hahaha but, I am trying to get together a list of a few new recipes that I am going to put together in much much smaller way to share with everyone.  I am still thinking of the best way to accomplish this and since my face book addiction is slowly being replaced by a new blogging addiction, what a better way to get off my butt and get started by blogging my way through it.  I really wish I would have blogged my journey making the cookbook last year because it was such an epic journey for me on so many levels that I would love to go back and read through all my trials and success but, then again I barely had time to get dressed each day when I was in the midst of cookbook creating let alone blog time.  So since it's a new year and a new mini cookbook being created here we go!