Italian Fig Cookie Thumbprint Recipe

To contact us Click HERE
    Filling:   1 1/2 cups dried figs 3/4 cup yellow light raisins 1/4 cup silvered almonds or coarse chopped walnuts 1/2 cup mixed dried fruits 1/4 cup sugar 1/4 cup water hot pinch of cinnamon   In a food processor chop everything until it's coarsely ground set aside.   3-3/4 cups all purpose flour
1  cup butter, softened
1/3 cup butter or lard
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup heavy cream plus two tablespoons
1 egg yolk

Combine all ingredients blending together until this forms a ball.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Roll into balls. With the bottom of a floured finger make an indentation in the center. Place on parchment paper. Bake for 10 minutes. Fill with fig filling. Bake at 350 degree hot oven until set not browned around 5 minutes. Cool sprinkle with powdered sugar.I love your comments...thank you for visiting What's Cookin Italian Cuisine Buon Appetito

Italian Rainbow Cookie Recipe

To contact us Click HERE

Absolutely my favorite cookie of all time, easier than I thought to make myself and a perfect addition to the Christmas cookie tray!

A great blogging friend made these Italian Rainbow Cookies last year, Arlene from The Food of Love Blog. I have saved and bookmarked until I got the nerve up to make these thinking these were extremely hard to do. After reading her simplified recipe I got up the courage, as this was one she had on her bucket list and on mine bucket list too! Thank you so much Arlene for letting me relive some wonderful memories from my past as a kid in the bakeries of Upstate N.Y. These were fabulous and I love this recipe!

I have been wanting to make them since I was a little girl seeing these on many a Wedding Tray as an Italian speciality in Upstate N.Y. Utica New York, where I am originally from is known for Authentic Italian Cuisine, one I am very proud to have grown up with an Italian family backround and friends that kept those traditions going. This is one that brings back the joys of childhood as this Italian girl who loves to bake waited way too long to try these. Plan on taking up most of the day, Not hard but time consuming.

                             Merry Christmas, Buon Natale my Christmas Italian cookie lovers!




Adapted from Arlene  The Food Of Love Blog

1 1/2 cups unsalted butter, softened
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 can almond filling 12.5 oz can found in the baking isle of your local supermarket (Solo Brand)
4 eggs
12 drops each red and green food coloring
1/2 cup seedless raspberry jam
1/2 cup apricot jam
12 oz semisweet chocolate, melted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Get three 12- 1/4  x  8-1/4  x  1-1/4 aluminum baking pans ready lined with parchment paper on the bottoms and lightly oil sprayed on anything exposed on the sides set aside.

Using a hand mixer on high speed, beat butter and sugar in a bowl until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes.

Add almond pastry filling, beat until smooth around 3 minutes.

Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Add flour beat just until combined.

Divide the batter evenly into 3 bowls.  Add the 12 drops of  green food coloring to one bowl, 12 drops of red food coloring to another bowl, and leave the third bowl plain white. Blend the food coloring into each batter to mix evenly.

Using a spatula, spread each colored batter into each separate prepared pan. Bake each pan until just beginning to brown on the edges, 10-15 minutes. Make sure the middle is set.   Cool completely.


Heat jams separately in glass bowls in  the microwave for every 30 seconds heating and stirring until smooth. Cool slightly.

Place green cake on a clean solid tray or cutting board using wax paper on the bottom. Spread using a spatula heated apricot jam over the green cake. Top with plain (white) cake for the middle. Spread heated raspberry jam over plain white cake and top with red cake. Press down lightly. Chill cakes to set jam, 1 hour.

Using a sharp knife, trim cake edges to form an even block. Slice the cake in long lengthwise into 1 1/2" wide logs (5-6 of them). Separate the bars/logs so your can spread the chocolate down the sides . Use a cake decorating spatula to spread melted chocolate over top, sides of each long bar, and smooth chocolate over the ends of each bar  until completely covered. Note: You can use a hot knife method to make the smooth on top by dipping your metal spatula in hot water and smoothing the chocolate in one direction.

Chill to set chocolate, then slice into 1/2" thick cookies.

Notes and Tips:

One of the hardest things I found was how hard these were to cut without cracking the chocolate off. Once the chocolate gets hard you will need a very sharp knife.
Two things worked better.  One freeze them first then cut or the second thing that worked was  leaving them out 10 minutes or room temperature, then placing the knife in hot boiling water, wiping it off and slicing through the hard chocolate made it easier and didn't crack so easy. Hope that helps.. Any other tips out there feel welcome to comment.

These will stay fresh for two weeks in the refrigerator and they also freeze well.

If You're Unorganized Enough, You Can Do Anything

To contact us Click HERE
Seriously.

I was trying to go through my 91 draft blog posts to see if there was anything fun to post and I found a card from LAST YEAR.

I'm so organized like that. It's okay to be jealous.

I like it though, so we're going to pretend I was saving it for a special occasion. Like Tuesday, August 21st.

Yeah, that.

This card was actually a sample I did for last year's Hope You Can Cling To event, which is near and dear to my heart. This year will be our third year, and I can't wait - I really hope you can join us. It's  a great cause, and the most fun you can have without getting arrested!

Stamps: From the Heart (retired)Paper: Whisper White, Silver GlimmerInk: Memento Tuxedo BlackAccessories: ShinHan Touch Markers: RP196, RP17, SU Oval dies, SU dotted ribbon

This weekend I also did a little project with some of my leftover paper from my fun CitraSolv experiment.

You can see the results on this post on Project Reanimate.

Thanks for stopping by!

I'm Angry... At a Candle

To contact us Click HERE
Well, not really. I'm really mad at my camera. Or maybe my eye. I don't know. I'm just angry.

I challenge you to make today's project and then go outside to try to photograph it and just SEE if you can get your SLR to focus in the right place!

I couldn't do manual focus because I actually hold my projects to take photos of them. I don't have a little outdoor photobooth set up and I really do prefer natural light.

So 300 blurry photos later, I finally got ONE pic I could use. *Growls*

I was on YNN again last week, doing handmade fall projects. We painted a pumpkin like a candy corn, did fall tealights, a little bat that held a Hershey nugget and this candle.

Now if you haven't gotten the new Stampin' Up! two stage heat gun, this project is a great reason to do so. We've all made disastrous, lumpy decorated candles by over-melting them when we were attaching the tissue paper, but the new gun has a lower heat setting that makes this MUCH easier.

To make the leaf, I just folded up tissue paper so that I was making about 8 leaves at once, and I cut them with my Autumn Accents die. These are all the shapes it cuts


It matches this stamp set:



I didn't use the stamps this time - I used Direct to Paper with More Mustard and Pumpkin Pie ink pads randomly all over the leaves.

Then just hold it on your candle and gently heat until you see the wax melt through the tissue paper and you're all done! I move my heat gun around a lot so I don't melt it too much in any one spot.

I thought about adding more leaves, but I ended up liking how clean and bright this looked, so I think I'll leaf it alone. Heh.


Can you be-leaf how simple and quick that is? It took much longer just to type about it!

Are you ready for fall? Our first cool temperatures have snuck in while I wasn't looking and it's a nice break!

Makes me less angry when I run outside to curse at a candle!

Loveyameanitbye.

You're The Bee's Knees!

To contact us Click HERE
You may have heard about Small Business Saturday in between your pie and your Cyber Monday.

This past Saturday was a day where you were encouraged to shop at the very heart of American business - the sole proprietors, the mom and pop shops - the people who took big risks to try to to make it on their own instead of slaving away in a cubicle.

I'm lucky enough to call one such small business owner a good friend - Korin Sutherland.

I never get tired of the stories of people who started a business literally in their living rooms. Korin did just that when she started Sweet 'n Sassy stamps five years ago and she's been a huge success.

As much time as I spend BUYING and PLAYING with stamps, I honestly don't know how she has the energy to DESIGN and MAKE stamps, but she does, and I'm so thankful that because she does, I have a sweet friend.

Korin and I met through Splitcoast, when she became a member company, and I just love her to death. She is sweet, and she is sassy :), so her marketing skills are obviously on point!

Anyway, today we're having a little birthday party for Korin and Sweet 'n Sassy, so I really hope you'll hop around and see all the cards her friends have designed for her birthday party. Here's mine, for a girl I think really is the bee's knees.




Stamps: Bee Happy Rhubarb Paper: Crumb Cake, Polka Dot Party, Chevron treat bagAccessories: Sizzix Westminster Hexagon Dies (2")
So happy birthday, friend! Thank you for making the world sweeter and sassier! Y'all hop along now!

There are Chicks, and There are Challenges, and Then There are Challenge Chicks

To contact us Click HERE
I've come late to this party, but I'm here.

I now realize that I am at my most creative when I play in challenges. I need to be forced out of my go-to habits, and some of my fave cards have been made for challenges that made me stretch. It's kind of a relief, actually, not to have to come up with your own starting point.

Especially when your desk is piled two feet high with unfinished business. You feel me?

So a few friends and I banded together, with chickens, and formed an informal challenge group called the Challenge Chicks.


Recognize those chickens?? Those are courtesy of none other than the uber fabulous farm girl Anna Wight, aka Sweet Miss Daisy.

Our band of challenge chicks includes, in reverse alphabetical order: Diane Zechman, Anna Wight, Jeanne Streiff, Kelly Schirmer, Kelli Hull, Vicki Gee, and yours truly.

Our first challenge to each other was to make a tag. Tis the season, after all. And perhaps they sensed that my Christmas gifts typically have someone's name written in Sharpie on the wrapping paper.

Seriously. A sharpie. Home girl needs to use her papercrafting skills for good, not evil.

So I couldn't wait to put together a tag with a technique that evolved in a Splitcoast thread. Someone asked about creating lighting effects on cards, like bokeh. I offered my bokeh technique card, but then, gregzgurl blew us all away with a glowing Christmas light technique, which I used for my tag.
Does that not seriously look like a glowing Christmas Tree?? I love it!! I'm going to do a tutorial on it for you, I promise. It's very easy. And if you're coming to my class this weekend, you'll get to do it. :)

Do you not love that tag hardware that matches the SU label punch? Sheesh. Love it. The trim is the new sweater trim.

Want to play along with the challenge chicks? Bring us your best tag and post it to the Splitcoast gallery, using keyword CHXDEC12! And feel free to grab our blinkie in the right sidebar. 

Now, speaking of chicks and birds and whatnot, I actually have a bonus project for you!

I was invited to be the guest designer for Inky Antics this month, and I'm having so much fun!!

My first project is a little Christmas gift card holder. Because I hang onto things forever, I used a retired Stampin' Up! gift card holder that I just embellished with DSP, a label punch and a wood snowflake I got from Lee in our December Christmas Club kit. The rhinestone I just colored myself. The birdie I paper pieced and colored with Touch Twin markers and popped him up with dimensionals. For full deets, click here!

Well that's more than enough stamping for a lazy Sunday. I better go stomp around in the woods for a bit.

Loveyameanitbye.

It's The End Of The World As We Know It

To contact us Click HERE
So in 1999, we knew what we were in for with the whole Y2K thing.

All the power would go out at once, we'd be plunged into darkness and have to drink out of the toilet. I knew a LOT of people who bought generators and stockpiled Snickers.

But it was a known quantity. No power.

With the Mayan apocalypse bearing down on us, I'm amazed at how poorly defined it is.

Will yetis or zombies come barreling out of the Barton Creek Greenbelt to eat us? Will an asteroid hit us? Will we spontaneously combust?

I think the Mayans must have been very unorganized people to have such a poorly defined apocalyptic prediction. Had crafters been in charge of the apocalypse, we would have organized a themed blog hop, had custom digital downloads for the pinhole sunglasses you'd need when the sun and all the stars exploded, and strategically pre-staged glitter and die cutting machines for those in harm's way.

It's embarrassing, really, to see what a shoddy apocalypse this is. So we just have to carry on and guess.

Since I just organized my glue collection, I'm actually feeling pretty confident that I can face whatever is coming.

In the meantime, I think it's very important that we don't stop recycling. Because if it ends up being a huge fizzle like 1999 we don't want to be surrounded by mounds of trash. And generators. And zombie bullets.

So I have three reanimations for you today.

I went to retail church yesterday - Whole Foods - and I worshiped some Hail Merry Tarts and the precise number of Telicherry peppercorns I needed for my insanely awesome carne guisada - I love the bulk section.

Since I didn't bring a bag, I got paper bags for my holy goods. And man, are they gorgeous - all year. You may remember my last Whole Foods bag project. I loved those saturated greens.

But the holidays are upon us and the bags have kept up. So, in order to procrastinate cleaning and prepping for my classes, I sat down and did a little recycling.

Supplies: Whole Foods paper bag, Poppy Parade Ink, Whisper White Cardstock & Seam Binding

Turns out their ink is a dead on match for Poppy Parade Ink, so I used Word Play to finish it off.

BUT - there are even CUTER holiday versions over at Project Reanimate - and all three of these cards were made with a single bag.

Recycling gives you good Mayan karma, I promise. And if it does come to pass, please head to the designated glitter pickup station for supplies. I'll be the one in the cute apron.

Loveyameanitbye.