Halloween Treats!

Tasting the spirit of Halloween!

This has been the first Halloween in years that I've really gotten into. That being said I decided I wanted to make some Halloween cookies for the neighbors. What initially gave me the idea to make cookies was the fact that I found a pack of 18 Halloween cookie cut outs for sale at Michael's for $1.99. Not bad. I'm sure they are even cheaper now as Halloween is almost upon us. (On another note not related to cookies, Michael's has a 40% off mobile coupon available on their website, which is always good to know..your welcome ;).) Anyways back to the mission of these Halloween cookies, I wanted to make sugar cookies but didn't have a good recipe that's were good ol' Google came in. Found a simple sugar cookie recipe and away I went, the recipe stated it would yield 24 cookies, but I ended up with 42 which worked for me.

Fresh out of the oven

Simple Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

1 Cup Butter

1 Cup Sugar

1 Large Egg

1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract

2 Teaspoon Baking Powder

2 3/4 Cup Flour

Directions:

Cream butter and sugar

Add egg and vanilla

Mix all dry ingredients, slowly add butter mix, stir

Roll out dough on floured board

Cut out and bake at 400 for 7-10 minutes

Cookies will be light in color with light browning along the edges

Cookies galore!

Now before we start talking about frosting let me forewarn you be sure you have plenty of time on your hands before beginning the frosting part of this venture, especially if you're planning on mixing more than just a few colors worth of frosting. It took me about 2 hours from start to finish to make and mix all of the variety of colored frosting and to frost the cookies themselves.

Typically when I make homemade frosting I just mix powdered sugar and water but wanted to see if there was a different variation on this and of course there was. Found a recipe for frosting which was pretty much as the same one I had been making except it calls for milk instead of water. I ended up liking the milk better than the water as it made the frosting thicker. The frosting recipe also called for vanilla extract which gave the frosting a nice taste, but I did not like the off white color the vanilla gave the frosting. I ended up using this off white frosting for my colored frosting, by simply adding food coloring to it. To create a nice bright white I cut out the vanilla extract, and just used powdered sugar and milk, which worked great. I really liked this frosting recipe as the frosting was thick, and it set quickly which made it easier to do my designs. As the frosting does set fairly quickly I would suggest only making a small batch at a time, and to only do one color of frosting at a time if that's the case. I would also suggest to only decorate one cookie at a time as it does set quickly. I tried to frost a few cookies at a time and had to work against time to spread the frosting before it set. Learn from my mistakes :)

Off white frosting due to vanilla extract

Bright white due to no vanilla extract

Simple Cookie Frosting

Ingredients:

1 Cup Powdered Sugar

1 1/2 Tablespoon Milk

1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract

Directions:

Combine all ingredients until smooth.

As I stated I used food coloring to create different colors for the frosting and learned a few new things about mixing colors with food coloring. Being as I was making Halloween cookies I needed a good black frosting. I hadn't thought about it until after I got home (as they do sell black food coloring at the store) so I decided to try my hand at creating some black frosting, boy was that an experience. I did some searching online to see if anyone else out there had concocted a good recipe for black frosting, and found one recipe to try which entailed of 4 drops of red & blue, and 2 drops of green and yellow. I followed the directions as is but the color initially turned out to be an army green. I found I had to add a bunch more red and blue to finally achieve a dark dark brown, which became blacker as it dried. I was happy with how my black came out but if I require a lot of black frosting in the future I will definitely just buy the black food coloring as it would save me time and irritation lol. I found a good recipe for orange turned out to be 2 parts yellow, 1 part red. The rest of the colors I created were pretty straight forward just using the primary colors of the food coloring with some frosting. 

My black frosting

The perfect Halloween orange :)

 Although it did take some time to make these holiday cookies I am super proud of my first ever Halloween cookies, and I know the neighbors were happy with them too ;)

**Enjoy and Happy Halloween! Cheers!**

Tuna Salad

Tuna salad is one of my favorite lunch time treats. Particularly the tuna salad from 'wichcraft.

I was buying these salads daily last year, when my boss said "why don't you just make it?" And genius struck!

So my obsession continued! 

The salad is super simple and easy to make, plus I'll give you tips on packing salads in your lunch. I spent years not eating salads because I thought it'd be soggy by the time I got to where I was going, then I read about packing salads one day and my work lunches changed.

Salad Recipe:

Tuna (packed in olive oil)

Olives

Fennel

Lemon juice

Olive oil

Arugula

Packing:

1. Put the wet parts at the bottom.

2. Start with tuna and oils, then olives and fennel, and place the arugula on the top.

3. Put the lid on and shake away.

I often make my salads the night before, and 16+ hours later when I eat it the lettuce is still crisp.

'wichcraft version

my version

ME Day

For the past few months (and next few) my life has been go, go, go. No time to spend with friends, no time to cook, and no time for myself. So yesterday when my boss called to tell me I could take the day off I was perplexed. Initially I called my coworkers to see if I could pick up shifts, scrambled for work to do. Then I realized, why? I haven't had an entire day off (especially a weekday) in who knows how long. So I decided to take it, and the ME day commenced.

I figured I'd do somethings that I love but never have time for. I slept in (to the ripe time of 9:30), went to one of the local coffee shops I'd been meaning to try, take a stroll through the MOMA, and have dinner with some friends.

The coffee shop is so "hip" I almost hate it, but it's so good how can I? It's called Coffeed and is housed in the same structure that houses the worlds largest green roof: Brooklyn Grange. They have a wide variety of coffee, including cold-brewed (one of my new favorites); but on this day I went with a Cortado, a shot of espresso with steamed milk a little smaller than a cappuccino. I stayed there for about an hour people watching  enjoying every sip.

Next stop, MOMA. 

I often only go to MOMA when friends are in town and always on the free night, which is a zoo! So this particular Wednesday was quite a treat with a normal sized crowd. I love their mix of new and old modern art, but especially I enjoy the architecture. The building has these random windows with views of outside to watch the sunlight dance across the tops of buildings, and internal windows that allow the viewer to have a glance across the museum to other people claiming stairs or walking through the large display spaces. I saw the removal of the Le Corbusier exhibit, The Collage City, and some Georgia O'Keeffe for a change. Then sat outside in the sculpture garden for a bit before taking off for dinner. 

Dinner was lovely, met up with some friends. We had high hopes for the restaurant, but it was a bust. The wine selection was good but nothing worth writing home to, the food left much to be desired, and the service was mediocre. However the company was great, so in the end that's the most I could ask for.

This is Halloween! This is Halloween!

My homemade Halloween cards :)

First things first yes I've been blog slacking. I have no excuse other than feeling a bit off and uninspired, but with Halloween right the corner I decided I better get into gear! I wanted to "get into the spirit" of this upcoming holiday and thought it'd be fun to send out Halloween cards for the first time. They had a ton of cute cards at the store, but I wanted to add my own personal touch so thought I'd make mine own instead!

I wanted to keep it simple but still make a bold statement so I decided to use some good ol' fashion glue and glitter. I wanted the glitter to really "pop" so I picked up some blank black cards and envelopes from Michael's. I had already purchased a 12 pack of assorted color glitter from Walmart prior to going to Michael's which ended up being a mistake as Michael's had cheaper glitter in smaller quantities (which is more ideal for this project). But ya live and ya learn right? 

All stocked up on my supplies I headed home to get to the fun part. As I stated before I wanted to keep the design simple for my cards so decided to do silhouette style design. To start I just sketched out my design on the card, "filled" it in with the glue, sprinkled some glitter on top, then shook off the excess glitter and BAM my first homemade Halloween card was done. The process of making these Halloween cards was simple and only took a little time but I'm very happy with the outcome!

Rough sketch

Adding the glitter

Ta da!

In this day and age home made cards are becoming some what of a "dead tradition" for lack of better words. This is one reason I decided to make my own cards.  I plan on continuing this new "tradition" of mine in an effort to keep homemade cards alive! 

10/21/13 UPDATE: Whoops! I forgot to add a very important final step for the cards! To prevent the glitter from getting everywhere I sprayed fixative on my cards! But I'm sure hairspray would do the trick too! ;)

On another note, while I was at Michael's I noticed a flyer on their window advertising that they are a "drop off" location for something called "Operation Christmas Cards". "Operation Christmas Cards" was set up in order to collect Christmas cards to send out to all active military personnel. A large number of troops aren't able to spend the holidays with their families as they are out protecting our freedom, which is where Operation Christmas Cards comes in! The goal of operation Christmas Cards is to send out quality, preferably home made Christmas cards, to show our appreciation for our military personnels' sacrifices. I think this is a great cause and wanted to get you all involved! 

Check out this LINK for more information about Operation Christmas Cards!!! 

Until next time friends...Cheers!!!

<3 Noonie