Dessert

Spice Cookies with Holiday Nog Glaze Recipe

6 · Dec 3, 2014 ·

+ This Spice Cookie with Holiday Nog Glaze post is brought to you by the folks at Silk +

There is nothing better to usher in the Holiday season than a good batch of Spice Cookies! My kiddos and I think that they are truly Christmas on a plate for sure…

There is just something special about a soft chewy cookie that is packed full of the spices of the season… Cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, molasses & a new addition cardamom, YUM!

This is a cookie that truly stands the test of time. People have been making spice cookies for hundreds of years and it’s a fun tradition at our house. This year I decided to add a little flair with a Holiday Nog Glaze…

Yep, you got it… It adds a whole lotta love to those scrumptious cookies. I chose Silk Holiday Nog over traditional Egg Nog for a few reasons…

First, I LOVE IT!! Seriously, have you tried this stuff? It’s all of the flavors of the season without all the guilt! I don’t think I will ever drink traditional Egg Nog ever again.

Second, It’s a great dairy-free alternative for our dairy-sensitive friends! Plus, here are the other goodies about Silk Holiday Nog…

Absolutely no cholesterol or saturated fat

Free of dairy, lactose, gluten, casein, egg and MSG

Verified by the Non-GMO Project’s product verification program

No artificial colors, flavors or funny business

Yea… it’s a NOG that I can truly get behind.

Third… As a Silk Member, you can enter to win a $500 Spa Gift Card!

Yes, we all know we could use one of those babies after the mad rush of the Holidays! You too can become a member HERE. They have new giveaways every month along with fabulous coupons for their members! SCORE!!

Now on to the cookies… Here’s how to make these scrumptious, Christmas on a plate, Spice Cookies with Holiday Nog Glaze.

Silk Cookies with Holiday Nog Glaze Recipe

Preheat oven to 350˚

3 sticks of butter (1 1/2 cups) softened

1 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 egg yolk

1/2 cup molasses

4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

4 teaspoons ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/4 nutmeg

1 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 cup of course sugar

1/4 cup Silk Holiday Nog

3 cups powdered sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

Cream butter & sugars with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs, egg yolk and molasses.

In a large bowl, combine your spices and dry ingredients; flour, salt, baking soda and all of the spices…

Aren’t they pretty?!

Gradually add the dry ingredients into the creamed sugar mixture until fully incorporated.

Place dough in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Remove the dough and scoop the dough into 2 inch balls with a cookie scoop. Roll the cookie balls in a bowl with the course sugar. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet and place in a 350˚ oven for 13-14 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool.

Mix Holiday Nog glaze while cookies are cooling. Add the powdered sugar to a small bowl, add salt and Silk Holiday Nog and whisk until it turns into a thick glaze.

Once the cookies are cool, dip the top part of the cookie into the glaze. Be careful to not fully submerge.

You only want to lightly kiss the top of the cookie with the glaze. Place on a cooling rack and wait for the glaze to set.

Once the glaze is set, serve your cookies with a nice glass of Silk Holiday Nog!

They taste great dunked into the nog as well… just sayin’

Hannah and I thoroughly enjoyed them…

The also make perfect Holiday neighbor gifts! Bag up a few of these bad boys and share with your family and friends. I would even pair it with a carton of silk, they’ll thank you for it!

This conversation is sponsored by Silk. The opinions and text are all mine.

Holiday Nog Pull Apart Bread + Neighbor Gift

74 · Nov 12, 2014 ·

+ This Holiday Nog Pull Apart Bread post brought to you by Silk +

I’m so excited for this time of year… I LOVE baking and creating goodies for my friends and neighbors. I grew-up with a Mom who kicked it into high gear for a few weeks in December every year, pumping out Holiday goodies like peanut brittle, chocolate peanut butter bars, and fudge along with cookies galore. I remember watching both my parents working together on those scrumptious neighbor treats, and it always made my heart happy.

I remember the year when I ate SO MUCH of my favorite Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars, I swore I would never eat chocolate again! It took me a few years, but I eventually found my way back.

Now that I’m the Mom, I try to come up with some fun goodie each to year to share with our friends. A few weeks ago, I was at the Pillsbury Bake-Off and was inspired. A few of the entires were fun pull-apart breads with various different flavor profiles. I thought it would be fun to have a Holiday Nog Pull Apart Bread for a neighbor gift.

This is really just a simplified cinnamon roll with the addition of a Silk Holiday Nog glaze on top. Why Silk Holiday Nog you ask?

Well… First off, I LOVE it! It has all the Holiday flavor without all the guilt. It is free of dairy, egg, casein, MSG & lactose. It has no cholesterol or saturated fat and has a fraction of the calories of traditional Egg Nog. It’s the perfect Holiday treat minus the guilt. I thought it would be the perfect flavor profile for my pull-apart bread!

Now, the real secret to this pull apart bread is how EASY it is to make! You will look like you slaved over it for hours, but no… It really only took minutes to make. Here’s how you make it.

Holiday Nog Pull Apart Bread Recipe

1 can of Pillsbury Crescent Seamless Dough Sheets

3 tablespoons melted unsalted butter

1 teaspoon pumpkin pie seasoning

2 teaspoons of sugar

1 teaspoon of Swedish Pearl Sugar (optional)

1 cup powdered sugar

1 tablespoon Silk Holiday Nog

pinch of salt

non-stick baking spray

Preheat the oven to 350˚

You will need small paper loaf baking pans to bake your bread in. This will also make it easier to give as gifts to your friends. Spray the pan with a non-stick baking spray and set aside.

Open your Pillsbury dough and unroll on a clean surface and brush with melted butter.

Then sprinkle the entire surface with pumpkin pie seasoning and sugars.

I like to add the Swedish Pearl Sugar to my bread, but it’s not totally needed. It just gives it that little extra something. You can find this in most grocery stores these days in the baking isle.

Next, cut your dough into squares roughly the width of your baking pan.

Stack your squares, and place them in your pan.

You should have some extra room for the dough to expand. Brush the top with more melted butter and sprinkle with more sugar.

Place in a 350˚ oven for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool.

In the meantime, you can whisk-up your glaze. In a small bowl add 1 cup of powdered sugar and pour 1 tablespoon of Silk Holiday Nog into the sugar, whisk together. The sugar should melt right into the Holiday Nog. Play with the consistency, If you like a thick glaze, don’t add as much liquid, if you like a thinner glaze, add more. Once you get your desired consistency, add a good pinch of salt. Carefully drizzle glaze over your pull-apart bread.

Package it up in a cellophane bag for your friends and neighbors. I think I am also going to add a carton of Silk Holiday Nog to the basket when deliverthis treat! It will taste so good with the bread!!

Now this recipe makes one loaf. If you are wanting to make more than one, you will need to grab more cans of dough and double or triple the recipe.

I will have you know… NONE of the bread that I made for this post even left the house! My husband and the kiddos got to it first and they inhaled them before they even had time to cool and be photographed. Yep they are that tasty!

For more fun holiday treat ideas from Silk, sign-up for their club and get special deals as well. You can also find great ideas on the Silk Facebook page.

What’s your favorite Holiday treat to share?

This conversation is sponsored by Silk. The opinions and text are all mine.

Chocolate Berry Pudding Surprise

1 · Oct 28, 2014 ·

+ Chocolate Berry Pudding Surprise +

Who doesn’t love to be surprised?

I ADORE a good surprise!!

This last weekend, I was hanging out with some of my favorite people…

This is my friend Sara Nitta and her sweet family. You may recognize her from The Biggest Loser season 11.

Isn’t she a cutie!! We were sitting around chatting the other day, talking about my blog work and stuff. I told her that I had a fun post coming up with Tofu…

Yes, tofu!

I already had a game plan in play and I was ready to share about my tofu adventure. To be quite frank… I really like tofu. I have never shied away from a dish because it had tofu in it.

I love having a plant based protein in my diet. I love that it can take on whatever flavor profile that you want. Did you know that? Tofu doesn’t have a flavor of it’s own. It’s a blank canvas. It takes on whatever flavor you give it.

Worried about the texture… Don’t!

You can get Mori-Nu Tofu in several different textures. If you like a firm tofu that you can season and pan sauteé, you’ll want to go with an extra firm tofu. You like a lighter, creamier feel? Then I would go with a Silken Soft Tofu. The softer tofu is perfect to add to smoothies, dips and sauces. You can even get a lite Tofu with lower calories and fat, but still packed with protein!

What makes Mori-Nu Tofu from Morinaga special, is it’s innovative packaging. With their special box system, you can keep your Mori-Nu Tofu right in your pantry for up to a year. It’s shelf stable and perfect to keep on hand for all kinds of recipes. Not only is is shelf stable, it’s verified Non-GMO, Kosher, Gluten-Free and doesn’t have any preservatives.

Now, when I told Sara about my Tofu recipe, she immediately said… You should create a dessert!

WHAT!

A dessert? For real?

I had a great savory recipe all ready to go, but this intrigued me. Sara had just returned from a week at Fitness Ridge and she told me about these parfaits that they served for dessert at the resort. She loved them! When she asked what the secret was to this creamy dessert… They told her, the secret was the tofu!

YEA, for real!!

She challenged me to come up with my very own parfait…

This is how I came up with my Chocolate Berry Surprise!

This is such a simple dessert to make… AND, it’s packed with protein so it’s not just empty calories. The funny thing, you would NEVER know that it had tofu in it!

First thing I did was throw my Mori-Nu Tofu into my mixer and mixed it up well. Then I a large Jell-o Chocolate Instant Pudding Mix and then continued to whisk on high speed. The mixture then turned into something that looked like brownie mix. Then I slowly added 1 1/2 cups of cold milk. You could even use Almond or Soy milk if you like to keep it dairy-free. Place the pudding mix into the refrigerator to chill.

Then all you have to do is layer your pudding with berries, granola and Cool Whip for a fun parfait!

Now, thanks to Sara, you have a tasty dessert that is packed full of protein and you can feel GREAT about indulging a bit!

Ready to add a little Tofu into your life?! You can check out all kinds of recipes and ideas at Mori-Nu’s Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter feed.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Mori-nu. The opinions and text are all mine.

The Classic Jif Peanut Butter Cookies Giveaway

3 · Oct 20, 2014 · 6 Comments

+ This Classic Jif Peanut Butter Cookies Giveaway sponsored by Jif® Peanut Butter +

As much as I love old recipes dolled-up with fun new ingredients, I am a huge fan of the classics. Sometimes you don’t need to mess with a good thing. I have fond memories of my Mom baking peanut butter cookies when I was a kid. Everyone tends to lean towards the classic chocolate chip recipe when it comes to cookie baking, my Mom sure did. When she broke out of the norm and baked peanut butter cookies I thought I was something pretty special. Don’t get me wrong… I love a good chocolate chip cookie, but there was just something extra special about baking those peanut butter cookies with my Mom. I would push a chair up to the counter and my job was to press the cookies with the fork. I thought had made it to the big times then…

I would dip the fork into a bowl of sugar and then gently pressing the cookie with the fork creating that classic peanut butter cookies hash tag!

Ahhhhh, sweet memories! Have you baked peanut butter cookies with your kiddos lately?

Here’s a link to the perfect Peanut Butter Cookie recipe from Jif®

What an even bigger excuse to make some scrumptious Peanut Butter Cookies? How about a fun GIVEAWAY from the folks at Jif®!

Jif® Peanut Butter Cookie Prize Pack Giveaway

Here’s what you may win from Jif®, this is a $80 Value…

Jif® Creamy Peanut Butter
Crisco® Baking Sticks All-Vegetable Shortening Pillsbury BEST® All Purpose Flour
Jif® apron
Customized J i f® cookie j a r
J i f® branded fork for cookie imprint