Category: Snacks

One Sweet Date Night

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“Oh, I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts, Deedly Dee! There they are all standing in a row.” OK maybe you won’t get this one unless you have children or are one, and I guess I am probably the latter of the two. Both Zazu and Rafiki sing this song from “The Lion King,” and it gets stuck in my head almost every time that I think of coconuts.

Movies are a great part of what I enjoy, including “The Lion King”, but it seems that sometimes it is the easy date choice. Every Friday for probably the last ten years, my wife and I have tried to make it a priority to have a standard date night. Sometimes they get routine by just going to a movie and having dinner. Not much conversation and interaction are involved when going to a movie, and I have been trying to think of more creative ways of enjoying time with my wife.

This last Friday for our date night we decided to make cookies for some of our friends and just spend some quality time together. We made Coconut Butter Cookies (this is where the coconut comes in) and Peanut Butter Cookies. It really didn’t take long to make the dough, then we realized that we had to refrigerate them for three hours. The Peanut Butter Cookies we could have made right away, but I like a chewy cookie. The recipe said, “for a chewy cookie refrigerate for 3 hours.” I decided to let them stand overnight, and we enjoyed the rest of the night together.

Both cookies are excellent recipes and are very easy to make. Do not let the wordiness of the one overwhelm you. It is an excellent recipe. We mixed each ingredient individually to get an even mixture and enjoyed the cleanup afterwards. After all you get to taste the cookie dough off of the bowl and spoon. It was fun, and we enjoyed being able to hand out the cookies to our friends.

So remember, “Have a sweet date night, and cook up something together.”

Recipes can be found Here:
Coconut Butter Cookies
Peanut Butter Cookies

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Almond Lace Cookies

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20120225-094026.jpgWell, this week has been a little hectic. Not only were we having problems with the computer, but we have been learning about Foster Care through DePelchin Children’s Center as well. My wife and I are trying to do foster care to adopt for a sibling group of two. We hope to do it later this year. I never knew how much information was involved with a situation like this. These children have lived through some real horror stories. So publishing this on Wednesday/Thursday like I hope to do for future posts was a little more difficult this week, but I Digress.

Almond Lace Cookies are wonderful little treats and easy to make. The recipe said that it would make 72 cookies. I don’t know what size cookies that they like, but this is Texas. Everything in Texas is bigger, and so were my cookies. Let’s just say we only had about 30 cookies when it was all said and done. I basically only did a spoon full when I placed them on the cookie sheets, but this made larger than normal cookies. Even though this is Texas and we want big things, I recommend going a little smaller. Theywill be easier to eat (it’s a fairly brittle cookie) and bake.

If you like almonds, you will probably really love these. The crushed almonds are accentuated with the almond extract which brings out the flavor even more. Everyone that had them really enjoyed them, and they didn’t last very long in our house. After all, there were only 30 cookies.

As for the chocolate, I do not recommend putting it into a Ziploc bag and placing it in the Microwave for a minute. This creates a Texas size mess to clean up. As I was pulling the bag out of the Microwave, only the bag came out. The chocolate stayed right where it was with some of theplastic. After I cleaned the mushy soft chocolate, I decided to try it a little differently.

My wife suggested that I put the Hershey’s dark chocolate bar in a Ziploc bag and place it in boiling water. Well, my wife is one smart cookie. It only took a few seconds to watch the chocolate melt in the bag, and it was very easily managed from this point on. Pulling the bag out of the (caution) boiling water, I snipped a small corner off of the bag, and it was easy to drizzle the chocolate onto the cookies.

This recipe is easy to make and worth the time if you want to treat your little ones. Hopefully we will soon be able to do the same as well. Remember, “Just like the chocolate, don’t leave any child behind.”

For the Recipe: Almond Lace Cookies