In MY Kitchen: Strawberry Gooey Butter Cookies for your Valentine

Last night, the boy and I made some Strawberry Gooey Butter Cookies - a recipe I found on Pinterest and thought would make a good Valentine's Day treat. Here are some photos of our efforts:

  

The recipe.

Very short ingredient list.

That's LM the photo bomber's arm over there on the right. He didn't quite understand that I would want a photo of just the ingredients. No. Not at all. 

In fact, most of the photos look more like this.

Cutest photo bomber ever though, no?

OK, you cream the butter and cream cheese together.

We let them get VERY soft before we tried this.

Then add in the egg. We forgot to add in the egg until the very end. But you won't forget to add the egg in here. 

Then you're ready for the cake mix.

Opening the cake mix box is a big task for little hands.

At least this box on this night was a doozy.

Once it was open, though, he did an excellent job of pouring the cake mix in.

You can see our egg still sitting there - it went in next. ;-)
 

Then we put the batter in the refrigerator and rinsed off our utensils.

Then we had a LOT of time to kill. So we watched a little Yo Gabba Gabba, played with puzzles, rode the horse, and took a bath. 

OK, after about an hour, the batter was good and cold.

I put the powdered sugar in a bowl and proceeded to roll the batter balls in the sugar.

This was an attempt at showing sticky hands without really touching the camera.

I found the batter to be really sticky, even after it was chilled. I guess I could have chilled it longer, but it was pretty firm, and well, able to be rolled into balls, but still sticky. The camera was sitting on the counter, so I used the cleanest finger to snap this photo, unseen. Worked OK I guess.

The recipe says it'll make 2 dozen - we made 26.

Pretty close.

The recipe also says to use parchment paper. I did not use parchment paper because if I can help it, I don't use such things. They fall into the "too much trouble" category.

 

I put them in the oven for 10 minutes and that was just the right amount of time. They were easy to take off the cookie sheet - fine to have not used the parchment.

In these photos, they sort of look like raw meat hamburger patties.

I promise they were gooey delicious cookies!

I plated some up this morning just to make them look special.

Another successful cooking time with the boy!

Strawberry Gooey Butter Cookies - found on Cookies and Cups

makes about 24 cookies

Ingredients

• 1 (8 oz) block cream cheese, room temperature
• 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
• 1 egg
• 1 box (18.25 oz) Strawberry Cake Mix
• 1/4 cup powdered sugar

Directions:

1. In your mixer cream together the cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add egg and beat until combined.
2. Turn mixer to low and slowly add in your cake mix. The dough will be thick.
3. Refrigerate dough for about a hour or so, just enough so it's not quite as sticky.                                   (I found it to be sticky even when the dough was very cold.)
4. When dough is chilled preheat oven to 350°                                                                                    (or if you're like me you did this at the beginning and were wasting energy that whole time)
5. Line your baking sheet with parchment paper (I skipped this step - I live on the edge)
6. Place powdered sugar in a small bowl.
7. Roll dough into balls about 1 inch in diameter, then roll in powdered sugar.
8. Place about 2 inches apart on prepared baking sheet and bake for approx 10 minutes until centers are just set.
9. Cool on wire rack

Snow and Ice in Dallas

We had a bit of snow a few days ago here in Dallas. Hard to believe, as it's been near 70 since, but on this day, for a few hours, we looked like a winter wonderland. I snapped a couple of photos with the new purse camera on the way to the car:

I was clearly taken by the berries.

See you soon.

NYC, Baby

I took a trip to NYC recently, for work. But, I caught up with several good friends while there for meals around the conference action. I know this will not be a shocker to you, but I took no photos of the actual people. As I have done in the past, when I get to visiting with old friends, I completely forget to take photos. At that time, I am always in the moment completely and enjoying their company. So, here are some random photos of NY from before and after time with my friends. Incidentally, I took the new purse camera, so all photos were taken with that new (to me) device:

Saturday night dinner

It was a restaurant, not a bar, even given the name. It was yummy, and looked VERY much, on the inside, like this place I ate in London, oddly enough. This restaurant is on the lower east side, where my friend Maria and I met up with our friend David, on his way to Brooklyn's St. Anne's Warehouse for a play. It was so nice to catch up with these two and enjoy a great restaurant. 

After dinner, Maria and I went back to Midtown, where we had some very mild weather for January in NY, and we walked around for a while, taking in the sites. Here are some other photos from that walkabout:

Set of the Today Show in Rockefeller Center

Made of Legos - the next day, I saw more amazing Lego stuff, 

which you'll see in a minute.

Lots of pretty churches in NYC

I'm not sure if this was still holiday lights, 

or how they decorate all the time.

This, surely, was holiday related.

This lizard is a permanent fixture.

The Apple store near Central Park - it's underground

OK, so the next day I met my friend Wilma for breakfast, and we stopped by the FAO Schwartz store quickly to pick up a souvenir for LM before I had to get back to the conference. We saw these big Lego people in that store:

Then, I took a self portrait in the hotel room.

With a grill coming out of my head.

So I tried a different mirror.

In my defense, there wasn't much else to do in the hotel room.

I was on my way to more conference-ing, as you can see.

Then I headed home...view from the plane.

Great weekend of information for work and visiting with friends in the downtime.

See you soon.

Playing with Daddy

Can you believe it's February 1st? I can't. 2013 is flying by already, just like all those years before it. At least it's Friday! Anyhoo, I purchased a new "purse" camera for myself - a small point and shoot that I can have on hand when I don't have all the camera equipment in tow. These photos were some of the first I took with that camera. The boy and S were playing with the "paper doll" again, like you saw LM doing in the dress up post earlier this week:

You can see some of his other Christmas gifts in this photo - tons of great playdoh toys and that "early math" game is full of elephants that he can count and sort by size or color. He loves all of that stuff. 

I'm pretty pleased with the new camera. It's taking nice photos, and fairly easy to use. It works well in a pinch!

See you soon.