Sm'ookie Time

Quickly becoming a Hosmer family fave (and a must~have tailgating menu item;). I found the original recipe in a magazine and have since tweaked it to my fam's personal preferences. The combinations are endless! But basically:

• a batch of your favorite cookie dough (I got lazy smart and did premade drop and bake cookie dough this time.)
• a jar of marshmallow creme
• a bag of chocolate chips

Bake the cookie dough according to the recipe; let cool. When cool, melt the bag of chocolate chips according to package directions. Then take half of the cookies and spread the melted chocolate on the "undersides". Spread marshmallow creme on the undersides of the other half of the cookies, then sandwich a chocolate cookie with a marshmallow cookie and viola! Sm'ookies!!! Smaller sized cookies work great~ the finished product is very rich! Some of our fave combos:

• chocolate chip cookies with butterscotch and marshmallow fillings
• double chocolate: choc chip cookies with chocolate and marshmallow fillings
• oatmeal raisin cookies with butterscotch and marshmallow fillings
• peanut butter cup cookies with peanut butter chip and marshmallow fillings

Lexi's Birthday Cake

When asked what she would like on her birthday cake this year, Lexi said she wanted a purple butterfly. I thought I needed to come up with something a little better than 1 lone purple butterfly so this is what I did. I remembered seeing the cake recipe on MckMama's food blog so I successfully hunted it down. Super easy, just time consuming. But basically 2 boxes of white cake mix and food coloring. I skimped on the powdered sugar for the frosting recipe and I shouldn't have. (I was running out of room in the mixing bowl and didn't want my kitchen dusted in confectioner's sugar.) In hindsight, the extra sugar would have made the frosting slightly thicker. The cake started to droop and sag and cutting it was a disaster, the thicker frosting would have definitely helped to keep it together. Also, I took the cake out of the fridge to display it and I should have kept it cold until the big "make a wish" moment. The warmer it got, the saggier it became. I bought pre~made Wilton's fondant at Michael's in their cake decorating section. Making the butterflies and little balls from the fondant was super easy. I used a cookie cutter for the butterflies and had the kids (wash their hands) and then roll out the little balls like tiny snowmen body parts:) I also used a small paint brush to brush edible lavender sparkle dust on the butterflies. For the balls, I kneaded in some purple food coloring.