Birthday Goats!

I was asked last week to make birthday cookies for one of my dad's friends. I was really excited to start the project because he uttered the best phrase a cookier could ever hear..."Just be creative!". I love it! You can pretty much do anything and are not restricted to any preconceived ideas. However, I could not think for the life of me what to make. Do I go funky, cutesy, age appropriate or traditional? Then I remembered they raise goats! She is in love with all of the baby goats and goes out to see them daily. Why don't I do cookies that look like the all of the goats and put their names on each of them.

I love this name for a goat! Too cute!

I decided to go a little more cartoony than realistic. I ended up liking the full bodied goats better than the portrait style ones, but what can you do? :)

Sorry about the delayed blog posts lately....life has been wild lately!

Thanks for reading!

The BEST chocoloate roll out cookie recipe!

While perusing the baking and cookier blogs I stumbled across this chocolate cookie recipe. Don't get me wrong, I love, love, love my traditional sugar cookie recipe, but always thought having another option would just be nice to have if I wanted to switch things up and get a little CRAZY! ;) What initially drew me to LilaLoa's blog were her amazing Easter cookies. The colors were just stunning!...and these little chickies! And then there it was. After reading practically every blogpost she had written, I found it!{Insert angels singing} Thank goodness I did because my last cookie request was for chocolate baseball cookies for a 4 year old's birthday. It had to be cookie destiny! :)

The End-All for Chocolate Cookies Recipe:

1 cup Butter
¼ cup Shortening
1 ½ cups Granulated sugar
2 Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla
1 tsp Salt
¾ tsp Baking powder
2/3 cup Cocoa
3 or 3 ½ cups Flour

Cream butter, shortening and sugar together. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix well. Add baking powder and salt and mix again. Stir in the cocoa until well blended. Add flour 1 cup at a time. *IF YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE COOKIES RIGHT AWAY, ADD 3 ½ cups flour. If you are going to “chill” the dough, or just wait for another day to make your cookies, STOP AT 3 cups. It will be totally soft and look all wrong and you will want to ignore the recipe completely and add more flour, but DON’T DO IT. Practice self-restraint. You will be glad you did and I will be proud of you. **Roll out on a lightly floured surface. Bake at 375 F for 6 ½ minutes.

*I added 3 1/2 cups of flour and put mine in the freezer to chill (see next asterisk) and it worked perfectly.

**I don't roll my cookies out with flour. I sandwich a disc of dough between two sheets of wax paper and then place in the freezer on an extra cookie sheet for about 8-10 min. When you pull it out all you have to do is peel the top sheet off and then cut your shapes! The cleanup is ridiculously easy! I've even started doing this with my pie crusts. Nothing beats baking and then have a 5 minute cleanup when you're through! :)

Not only were these cookies tasty, but they also held their shape like nobody's business! I've never seen cookies come out of the oven with such crisp sharp edges!