SUGAR COOKIES

We decorated cookies with the kids yesterday. What fun! :)

Before I show you all the pictures (taken on my phone by the way,) I'll show you the recipe. I found it on Mel's Kitchen Cafe. Great website with a ton of recipes! You should go check it out. I just changed a couple things. I didn't add almond extract (Sammy's allergic) and I didn't add lemon zest (we didn't have any lemons.) So if you want to see the original recipe click here. Here is the recipe that I used.

Sugar Cookies

All You Need Is (LOVE):

• 1 1/2 cups butter, softened to cool room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 5 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt

What to Do:

1. Preheat oven to 400˚F
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugars for 3-4 minutes until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each egg. Add vanilla extract and mix. Add two cups of flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix. Add remaining flour and mix until flour is incorporated and the dough is soft and smooth.
3. Dust a counter with powdered sugar or flour and roll the dough to desired thickness. 1/4 inch works well. Cut the dough into shapes. Place the cookies on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake for 7-8 minutes. The cookies will not be brown. Don't over bake them.
4. Cool completely before frosting.

Before I Go:

I didn't cut them into shapes. I just spooned them onto the cookie sheets. I made little cookies with half the dough and one giant cookie with the rest of the dough. The giant cookie took approximately 15 minutes. I kept checking the oven to make sure that it fully cooked and didn't over bake. And it turned out perfectly. The kids laughed at seeing such a big cookie. These cookies are excellent for frosting. They are so soft that they melt in your mouth. They aren't that sweet, so they aren't "stand alone" sugar cookies to me. But they are perfect with frosting on top. We used Confetti Funfetti frosting because Sammy's not allergic to it. It has no milk. I split it up and added food coloring as shown below. Blue, green, and yellow. We had five types of sprinkles. The confetti sprinkles that came with the frosting, along with a set of four different sprinkles (Carnival sprinkles, star mix, sequins, and dinosaurs) I bought at Sur La Table (LOVE that store!) They had so much fun decorating their own cookies. Sammy quickly ate hers. Kai kept adding more sprinkles. Kona just liked decorating it. He didn't actually eat his, haha. Silly boy. Here are some pictures from our adventures in cookie decorating. Sammy (age 5), Kai (age 4), Kona (age 2).

Supplies are ready:

Ready to decorate sugar cookies

Five types of sprinkles

Blue, green and yellow frosting

Let's decorate!

Finished products :)

Sammy

Kai

Kona

Wait... Take a few bites, add more sprinkles...

A little more... Yes! Hooray! SPRINKLES!!!

I made a GIANT cookie!

And a little "mini-me" cookie.

Yum.

Please leave any questions or comments below. Happy cookie-ing! Thanks for stopping by!

Have a great day!

♥ K i K O ♥

KATNISS-APPROVED PUFFY BUTTERMILK BISCUITS

Here is another recipe from The Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook. This recipe is called Katniss-Approved Puffy Buttermilk Biscuits. In Chapter 6 of The Hunger Games, Katniss orders this dish along with a side of goose liver in her Capitol living quarters. I just posted a recipe for Katniss's Favorite Lamb Stew with Dried Plums. I made these biscuits to eat with the stew. Such a simple recipe for tasty biscuits.

Katniss-Approved Puffy Buttermilk Biscuits

All You Need is (LOVE):

• 3 cups flour
• 3 Tbsp white sugar
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 cup (2 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1 1/4 cups buttermilk

What to Do:

1. Preheat oven to 425˚ F.
2. Blend flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in a large bowl.
3. Using fingertips, rub chilled butter into dry ingredients until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add buttermilk and stir until evenly moistened.
4. Using 1/4 cup of dough for each biscuit, drop biscuits onto a well-greased baking sheet, spacing about 2 inches apart. Using a spoon, flatten top of each biscuit. Bake until biscuits are golden brown on top, about 15 minutes. Cool slightly. Serve warm.

Before I Go:

This is just a really simple and easy buttermilk biscuit recipe. So give it a try. It is so tasty with strawberry jam. Yum! They also go well with stews and chili. Please leave any comments or questions below. Thank you for stopping by!

Have a great day!

♥ K i K O ♥

KATNISS'S FAVORITE LAMB STEW WITH DRIED PLUMS

The Hunger Games movie finally arrived in theaters this past weekend. Hooray!!! So in honor of this momentous occasion, I decided to cook Katniss's favorite dish from the Capitol. Lamb Stew with Dried Plums. In Chapter 9 of The Hunger Games, when Caesar Flickerman asks Katniss in her interview, "What's impressed you most since you arrived here?" Katniss honestly answers, "The lamb stew." So there you go. I found this recipe in The Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook. You should definitely check out this cookbook. It is truly amazing. Thank you Emily Baines. There are more than 150 recipes inspired by The Hunger Games Trilogy. I am so excited just thinking about it. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is my favorite book ever. Here's what the cookbook looks like. So cool, right? I know!

Katniss's Favorite Lamb Stew with Dried Plums

All You Need Is (LOVE):

• 5 lbs of lamb fillet, shoulder or leg, cut into 2" pieces
• 2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup flour
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup water
• 4 cups beef broth
• 2 tsp white sugar
• 3 tsp brown sugar
• 3 cups diced carrots
• 1 cups diced zucchini
• 1 1/2 cups diced celery
• 2 large onions, diced
• 3 potatoes, cubed
• 5 cups dried plums
• 2 tsp dried thyme
• 3 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
• 2 tsp chopped fresh basil
• 1 tsp chopped fresh parsley
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 cups ginger ale

What to Do:

1. Place lamb, salt, pepper, and flour in a large mixing bowl. Toss to coat meat evenly.
2. Heat olive oil in a large pan and brown the meat, working in batches if you have to.
3. Remove lamb to a side plate. Pour off fat, leaving 1/4 cup in the pan.  Add the garlic and onion and sauté until the onion becomes golden. Deglaze frying pan with the 1/2 cup water, taking care to scrape the bottom of the pan to stir up all of the tasty bits of meat and onion.  Cook to reduce liquid slightly, then remove from heat.
4. Place the lamb and garlic-onion mixture in a large stockpot. Add beef stock and sugars, stirring until sugars are dissolved.  Bring mixture to a boil, cover, reduce to low heat and simmer for 1 1/2 hours.
5. Add the vegetables, dried plums, herbs, and ginger ale to the pot. Simmer for 30-45 minuted, or until meat and vegetables pierce easily with a fork.

Before I Go:

The recipe in the cookbook calls for 5 pounds of lamb and yields 8-10 servings. Due to the fact that I was cooking for three kids and two nannies, I just used one pound of lamb. Therefore, I only made a quarter of the recipe I just showed you. But I halved the amount of beef stock instead of quartering it so that it would be more stew-ish. I also did not add in any herbs. This stew is very rich. The plums give it great taste, but also make it very sweet. Serving with rice helps decrease the impact of this rich Capitol stew. I also made one other thing from the cookbook to go along with it. Shown in the picture above are Katniss-Approved Puffy Buttermilk Biscuits. They are extremely delicious as well.

Curious as to what the inside of this cookbook looks like? Take a peek at this stew recipe by clicking on the images below. Thank you for stopping by. I hope you enjoy this recipe. Let me know in the comments below if you try this recipe and how it turns out for you. Don't worry, it's not as scary as it looks. It's actually fairly easy if you follow the steps. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to leave them in the comment section below. Oh, and have you read The Hunger Games Trilogy? Do you absolutely love it? I sure do! I got Phylicia hooked on the books as well. If you have not read them, read them now. Before you make the stew. Get hooked too! Haha. Thank you for stopping by!

Have a great day!

♥ K i K O ♥

A Picnic!

The other day, I was talking to Kai (the four-year old boy) and he said, "Kiko, do you know what's a picnic?" "What's a picnic, Kai?" I asked. "A picnic is where you get food and a blanket and you put the blanket on a hill and you eat on a hill!" he excitedly answered. So I said, "Well, we need to go on a picnic sometime then, huh?" "Yeah!"

The weather has been so beautiful for the past few days. So when I picked up Kai and Kona from school yesterday, I decided to surprise them with a picnic. Phylicia got home as I was preparing the picnic, so I asked if she'd like to join us. She said yes of course. 2 Nannies! Whoohoo! So Phylicia, Kai, Kona, and I went to a surprise hill for a picnic. Kai was so excited!  I thought I'd share some of the pictures I'd taken on my phone of our somewhat impromptu picnic.

Kai (4) & Kona (2)

2 Nannies & 2 Boys

 Kai posing behind his art

Kai and Kona created this piece of art for our picnic

Have a great day!

♥ K i K O ♥