The Final Stage of the Journey

And now for the final dessert post which brings

this year-long Sweet Journey excursion to completion:

Holiday Sugar Cookies

 

So I gathered the ingredients for one last calendar baking trip.

 

 The first step was to cream together the sugar and butter.

Next came the vanilla.

Then I grabbed the eggs and sour cream,

and beat them together in a separate bowl.

After adding this to the mix, 

 I started dumping in the 5 1/3 cups of flour this recipe calls for.

When the flour was all mixed in,

it was time to add in the baking powder, 

baking soda, salt, and nutmeg.

 Once the cookie dough was done,

 it went into the fridge for at least 8 hours.

Then it was finally time to roll out the dough, 

cut out the cookies and bake them.

Since Christmas is over, 

I went with a star and snowflake shapes.

 Just an FYI - this recipe makes a TON of cookies.

So I enlisted help.

Here's Kaitlyn running a pan of cookies over to the oven.

And here are the cookies after baking.

 We kept up the cookie cutting,

but also whipped up some frosting.

All it takes is some butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk.

 After a quick mix,

 and some blue food coloring, 

 we were ready to frost!

It felt like we baked, frosted, and sprinkled all night.

 

But whenever I looked around,

there were still more cookies to deal with!

 Ugh! This was quite the task 

and there were so many cookies 

that we ran out of frosting in the end.

All I can say is that I'm glad I had help!

You might need some too if you take this recipe on.

Holiday Sugar Cookies
2 c. sugar
2 sticks margarine
2 tsp. vanilla
3 large eggs
1 c. sour cream
5 1/3 c. flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. nutmeg

Cream sugar and margarine. Add vanilla. Beat eggs, sour cream, and flour, and add to sugar mixture. Add baking powder, salt, baking soda, and nutmeg. Refrigerate dough overnight before rolling out on lightly floured surface and cutting into desired shapes. Bake cookies at 375 degrees for 10 minutes.


FROSTING:
2 c. powdered sugar
3 Tbsp. margarine
1/4 tsp. orange extract
1/4 tsp. vanilla
Enough milk to reach creamy consistency

For frosting, beat all ingredients until smooth and creamy. Add a few drops of the food coloring of your choice. Each cookie will need approximately 2-3 Tbsp. of frosting. It's easiest to drop the frosting in the middle of the cookie, pushing it to the edge and smoothing it out with an off-set spatula or butter knife.

And with that, the Sweet Journey is complete.

I hope you enjoyed this tasty little trip as much as I did!

Banana Nut Bread

As you may have noticed after a look at the Sweet Journey page,
I failed to make the October dessert :(
It was a New Year's Resolution at the start of this year
to make each dessert on this calendar
during the month of the page it graced.
While I may have failed to make October's dessert
during the month of October -
I'm still going to finish strong and
make sure I bake all 12 desserts.
So watch out people, I'm on a baking mission.
On the last day of 2010,
I'm making both October's dessert and December's dessert.
So let's get started!

Banana Nut Bread

Here's a look at the ingredients -

 First, I beat together the sugar and eggs.

 Then slowly added in a half cup of oil.

 I mashed up 4 bananas,

 and slowly added them, some sour cream and vanilla to the mix.

 Next came the flour,

 as well as some cinnamon, salt, and baking soda.

 All that was left to do was spray the loaf pan

and chop up the walnuts.

 Then the walnuts went into the batter,

 and the the whole mix got poured into the loaf pan.

 After an hour in the oven,

it looked like this.

 I sliced some up and fed it to the family.

It got great reviews.

This banana bread recipe was so moist and delicious 

that Adam liked it even better than my regular recipe.

 You might want to give it a try!

Banana Nut Bread
1 3/4 c. all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 c. oil
4 ripe bananas, mashed 
1 tsp. vanilla
3 Tbsp sour cream
3/4 c. walnuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease loaf pan and line bottom with parchment paper. Mix together flour, soda, cinnamon, and salt. In separate bowl, beat sugar and eggs together until light and fluffy. Slowly add oil. Add mashed bananas, vanilla, sour cream. Fold in flour mixture and nuts. Pour into prepared pan and bake for about 50 minutes to an hour. 

Because Mullets Were Only Cool in the 80's or Walter's 1st Haircut

 My dear cousin Heather was in town,

so we used this opportunity to tackle a growing problem.

The back of Walt's hair seems to be growing at a faster

rate than the rest of the hair on his head.
As you can see in the pic below,
he can barely even grow hair on the side of his head!

But the back was long and starting to hang down his neck,
so something needed to be done.
Here's a view from behind before the haircut -

 Not super bad, but because we are anti-mullet in this house,

we wanted to tackle this problem early.

So Heather took her scissors after the back of Walt's hair.

 He stood rather nicely on a chair during the whole ordeal.

I was impressed.

She worked quick and before long, he was all done!

 This is only how much hair he actually got cut off.

 But now the back of his head looks like this -

So much better!

Santa Round 2

 We were in LP over the weekend.

Walter got to hang out with his cousins Emma and Ally

as well as meet the newest member of the family, baby Cecelia.

On Christmas Eve, Santa and Mrs. Claus 

stopped by Walt's great-grandma's house with presents.

Here they are with Cecelia.

Walter liked watching them from the safety of his auntie's lap,

 but when his name got called to get his gift

he started kicking and screaming.

Oh well -

 Better luck next year Santa!

Rheult Farm

We rounded up the fam -

 (minus Adam, who was still home sick at the time)

 and took another trip to Santa's Village this year,

so Walt could see Santa.

We did what we do every year -

We turned Walter into an elf.

We wrote letters to Santa.

  Here's Lexi working on hers.

Walt wrote one too.

 It said:

"Dear Santa,

Please bring me a baby brother or sister. I've been good.

Love, Walter"

 Then Kaitlyn brought us out to the mailbox 

to send them on their way.

 We saw reindeer.

And last but not least,

we went in to see Santa himself.

But this year didn't go as well as last year.

 First - my lens was all fogged over from coming in from the cold,

so my pictures are blurry.

Second - Walt was bawling 

and wanted NOTHING to do with Santa.

 He much preferred sitting on Grandpa's lap,

 while the girls did their crafts with the elves.

 Walt wasn't too sure about Mrs. Claus either,

 but after he saw Grandpa talking to Santa,

I thought maybe we'd still get him to take a picture.

 Nope - Walt was still pretty nervous.

 This was as close as we got this year. 

Still pretty adorable.

 Merry Christmas to you and yours!