Lazy Linzer Lounging

Fantastic linzer cookie tool!

and so many options!

Well... I have a blog... do i use it? No... But today i find myself with a little bit of time that I don't necessarily often  have :-)
ITS FREAKEN NOVEMBER! 
... can anyone else believe that? As much as it pains to me admit.. i can't believe its November, but my body understands it! Because for the past few days i can think of nothing but baking and listening to Christmas/ Holiday music. So today i have started making Linzer cookies (Ina Garten's Recipe) which i absolutely love. I have been wishing to make them for a couple weeks now and While wandering around Michaels in search of green duct tape (which they did not have) I found a Wilton Linzer cookie cutter! I didn't know these existed! But i was ecstatic to find it! So pulling up my trusty Michaels coupon app (if you have a smart phone you would be stupid not to have this app.) No more fumbling for coupons only to find out your grabbed the wrong one and the one you have in your hand is expired! gah! So! i pulled up my 40% off coupon screen and proudly presented it to the not so impressed cashier who gave me the "are you serious? this is only $5.99" look, and ignored it as he scanned my phone anyway!. So for $3.88 it came home with me! (i will use a coupon to save 3cents if i have to!)


I love that it comes with 3 specifically christmas shapes for the center cut outs and then 3 every day cut outs!  I am going to take this opportunity to share Ina Garten's Recipe... you could deffinetely google it to get it. But why make you do any more work than you have to... you ARE already here... :-)

 Linzer  Cookies
From Ina Garten of the Food Network
3/4 pound unsalted butter at room temperature (or micro on def for 10 sec intervals until soft not melted!)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (or the cheap stuff... like i had :-P )
3 1/2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup good raspberry preserves (or jelly, jam, any flavor you have on hand)
Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting

For the Cookies: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix together the butter and sugar until they are just combined. Add the vanilla. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour and salt, then add them to the butter-and-sugar mixture. Mix on low speed until the dough starts to come together.

Dump onto a surface dusted with flour and shape into a flat disk. Wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

Roll the dough 1/4-inch thick and cut 2 3/4-inch rounds with a plain or fluted cutter. With 1/2 of the rounds, cut a hole from the middle of each round with a shaped cutter. Place all the cookies on an ungreased baking sheet and chill for 15 minutes. (i'm not going to lie... i didn't do this... and we lived to tell about it :-D )

Bake the cookies for 15 to 20 minutes,(depends on oven) until the edges begin to brown. Allow to cool to room temperature. Spread raspberry preserves on the flat side of each solid cookie.  Dust the top of the cut-out cookies with confectioners’ sugar and press the flat sides together, with the raspberry preserves in the middle and the confectioners’ sugar on the top.

Linzer cookies made easy! Thanks Wilton!

 AMAZING!


I have a friend who is not able to eat nuts or seeds.. so I found some raspberry SEEDLESS jelly which i will be using today... who knew... they also make strawberry seedless jelly.  Your really could use any sort of jam or jelly or preserves you like. I read that someone else even used Nutella.... had i read that prior to my linzer cookie venture that is exactly what I WOULD be doing. And plan on doing in the near future. 


Random tips. 

1. Always put just as many "top" cookies as you do "bottom cookies" on the same tray. I don't find they cook any different. But this way if you accidentally burn a tray you lose whole cookies and not just all your bottoms!

2. I always have a random small ball of dough left over. I never throw it away until all my cookies are baked and put together. In the event you drop a piece and it smashes into oblivion.... its nice to have that to make a back up piece... or 2 :-) 

3. These cookies are very tasty as soon as they are finshed. But this dough does bake up crumbly and crispy.  If you like crunch they are awesome. But i MUCH prefer to eat them the next day. After some of the moisture from the filling sort of soaks into the cookies and softens them up just a little bit. Play with them! and always store them in an air tight container!

4. ENJOY!

Finished! (sans powdered sugar coating)

My broken Toe... original blog 3/9/2008

My Broken Toe

Current mood:bullied

Dear Friends and Family, I am just writting to explain to you all the Absolute worst day in the history of days that I have experienced today. For starters, I was rudely awoken today at the ass crack of dawn. Emily decided it was important to send me ridiculous text messages and awaken me from my slumber. I disagreed. After i slowly wipped the sleep away from my eyes. I started walking towards my door to only hear the words of my mother "HELLO". So my parents were here. I was awake, but barely, and wearing very mismatched pjs and a hoodie. I dont think i have brushed my hair since yesterday morning but I didn't care. Emily was gone getting her oil changed or something as equally entertaining. I hung out with the rents for a little while until Emily and her father both showed up. They had paint supplies and were ready to get started painting the hallway. Seeing there was work to be done my parents decided it was time for them to leave. They left, Emily and her father began to prep the area. I changed into some "painting clothes". And went out and decided to help them. We painted, listened to music, visited, and painted some more. At one point i looked out the back window and noticed neighbors I had never seen before chipping ice away at their driveway. Which is why their new name is "The Chippers". But then i went back to painting. No less than 15 hours later we were FINALLY done with our project, everything was painted, the walls, the ceiling, and the trim x2. We were covered in paint and exhausted and looking forward to a nice relaxing evening of sitting down and watching a movie or 2. But just like in life... sometimes... Plans Change. So Emily and her father go down to the cellar to start washing out their rollers and brushes and water starts coming out of the carefully planned out drainage system that we call a cellar. I dont know who designed this, but it was pretty poor if you ask me. Apon building the house. The designer put in a concrete floor in the cellar with a 2 inch gap around near the walls. They also drilled approximately 18 holes in the foundation so that rain water could run down the holes and into the little gap, run around the cellar and into the water drain in the corner. These amazing designers did not take into consideration what would happen if the water was shooting out of the wall and hitting the floor approximately 2 feet FROM the gap in the floor and running down the floor towards the drain. The cellar starts to flood as Emilys dad is leaving to get coraplast (thin plastic boards for making signs) so that we could put them against the water and redirect it into the 2 inch moat. But as he leaves the moat is filled surrounding the entire cellar and the water is still pouring in faster than it ever should. So Emily and I spring into action. We start emptying tubs and totes that have random things in them that can be tossed out on the tables and start bucket brigading the water into the utility sink. The drain in the floor can't handle all the water and begins to back up. Emily stands guard to the right of the utility sink emptying 2 large bins of water which doesn't sound that hard, but she is doing this under the stairs which means she is constantly hunching over and narrowly missing the boards and nails sticking out from the ceiling to pierce her head and face. I was on post to the left of the washing machine which is to the left of the utility sink. So i have one thin wide tote filling up from 4 of the holes at which point i have to constantly take 2 paint cans and bucket brigade that water to the deeper tote that is filling up right next to it so I can use a mini trash can (that is 2 times the size of the paint buckets) and bucket brigade the water from the bigger tote and throw it over the washing machine into the utility sink. I also have the lid of my wrapping paper plastic storage bin catching water from another 3 holes that i have to pick up and toss into the sink as well approximately every time i transfer water from any of the other 2 bins. While this is all going on we also keep taking turns with another paint can bucket brigading water from a large green beverage bin from directly under the utility sink into the sink and there is also a mop bueckt we have to keep dumping ever 2-3 minutes. This goes on for a very long time. Emilys dad calls and says he is on his way to get the plastic. Emily alerts him that we are in crisis mode. By now we are so soaking wet and the water is still pouring in like there is no tomorrow, the floor is floating away and the drain is backing up. The temperature of the water is approximately 31.5 degrees and we cant feel our legs or arms. I have also accidently doused myself in a bucket of freezing cold water and could prolly ring about 1/2 gallon out of my clothes. We are cold, we are tired, and we both have to pee. The cat by this point has taken higher ground and has pressed himself between the spray foam insulation and the ceiling just watching us clutz around and become more and more annoyed. Her dad finally shows up, sees that the progression of the "problem" has exceeded his expectations and comes over to help us. He lifts somewhere around the neighbor hood of 3 bucket loads of water and decides he is going to Home Depot and buy a sub pump. What seems like 10 hours later... but realisitcally was about 30 minutes he comes back with a new sub pump. Emily and I continue to work and lift and move water as fast as we can as it is still pouring down the walls and floor. We turn around and her dad is reading the directions. We both just look at each other.....Now I know you dont want to mess with electrical appliances in a water soaked room, but we were working our asses off and just to turn around and see him reading kinda cracked me up. So i dont know exactly what happened. But he was angry and picked up the box and left. He disappeared. So after approximately 3 hours of bucket brigading, we quit. The water was still running out onto the floor like a freaken waterfall. I decided we would let it go, do what it had to do, and survey the damage later. We went upstairs started to dry off and quit shivering when her dad re appeared. We found out he stormed back to home depot because he didn't think he got all the parts in the box of the first one and came back with a BRAND new sub pump. He then proceeded to set it up... again. After this one didn't work, we decided to try another outlet. HA! And it FINALLY started to work!! and the water began being pumped out of the cellar and into the yard! YAY! since the water was being swept away into the yard we could finally use the coraplast to re route the water back into the moat. All seemed well. It was about 9pm. The day that started so early and i thought we would be done, and watching movies at like 4-5pm ended up taking quite a few hours more. Her dad finally left, the situation had been maintained (for now) . Clean up will proceed as soon as the water dries :-(. So we finally come upstairs to offically dry off, warm up, and get something to eat. We cook a frozen pizza and have some dinner and get ready to chill for the rest of the evening. As if today couldn't get any worse. So I go to sit on a kitchen stool and mess around with my computer (like i do daily) and i go to place my foot on the bottom spindle of the stool like I always do, my foot slips and my pinky toe grabs ahold of it and gets bent back from what i can imagine to be a 180 degree angle from its original position attached to my foot. I screem and grab the counter. Emily looks up from her place on the couch and I yell "OMG I think my toe fell off! come see if its on the floor!" And wouldn't you know she WOULD NOT come see if my toe fell off. If i was a betting girl i would have bet that my bloody stump of a toe was sitting on her pergo kitchen floor. It hurt so incredibly bad and I couldn't feel my pinky toe any more. So Emily wouldn't use any of her pull at the pain clinic where she works, and wouldn't call a doctor. And she will not cast it. I explained to her i could talk her through a casting. We could use flour, water and news paper. I just made paper mache easter eggs with the residents Thursday! I know it works! She wouldn't do it! So i immediately called maggie and explained to her that I may not be at work on Monday due to my recent injury. I then decided i could prolly work through my pain and be placed on light duty. I will prolly be out of commission for at least 4-6 weeks. Especially since the only person in the entire world that cares about my broken toe is Heather (shout out to Heather and her caring). So since then I have had my poor toe elevated and have been screaming in pain everytime Emily even looks at it. If she isn't going to cast it then she cant touch it. :-( :-( She did ask me if I needed anything. and I explained to her that I might need some Roxynol.... she gave me Ibuprofin. I didn't take it. She was just mocking me. She will not carry me up the stairs, and she will not help me in anyway. She just told me I was being Fussy.... FUSSY! I HAVE A BROKEN TOE!!!! If my roommate will not nurse me back to health then who will?!?!?! no one.... i am left to navigate this deep dark road to recovery alone. I hope I can make it, I will strive to work towards healing. But if the pain is too great and I feel I just can't go on. Please know that I always loved you and cared for you, and I hope someday we can be reunited in the great broken toe waiting room in the sky. Unless your Emily.... and I hope you know, if I die from this, the entire thing is your fault. Thank you! Love always Erin Belden

Cupcake Turtle Derby.. original Blog 2/26/08

The Cupcake Turtle Derby of 08

Current mood:productive

As many of you know I have been dabling in a plethera of hobbies lately trying to find my niche. More recently I traveled abroad to scout out the top 1-2 racing cupcake turtles in the land. And alas I have found them! May I present to you Sven buttacreeme, and Yohan Eycing.  Hand plucked from the streets of Germany they were found fighting local street turtles just to get by. Their harsh upbringing and strive to win has gotten them local media attention. And with that my interst. With a little bit of encouragement and 23 hours a day of training I have helped them get to where they were ment to be. A secret under ground cupcake turtle racing circle in the New Hartford New York area. As many of you know I have had my finger on the pulse of this secret turtle racing ring for sometime now. After watching most of the local talent and traveling over seas to bring back my own talent, I feel they are ready to make the big time. And my friends, I am here to say that Cupcake Turtle Racing as you know it is about to change forever. Sven & Yohan have set the bar high. Higher than any American turtles have dared to reach. The video that has not yet been released to the public is just a clip of what is soon to come. But look out underground cupcake turtle racing! Sven and Yohan are taking you by storm!


Video will be soon to come, as well as a few of the stills from the Training event.

Peanut Butter Banana cups... :-( Original Blog 12/3/07

NO NANAS NEVER!

Current mood:angry

Dear Fellow Bloggers, and or readers....

I have gathered you here today to discuss a very serious matter. As many of you know the holiday season is soon approaching us. So today while running some errands I was perusing through my local walmart like any other person filling time before their sunday night tv shows are on. When suddenly i turned a corner and was shocked to see a "Limited Edition" logo on our beloved peanut butter cups.

Apon further inspection and using my aquired 3rd grade reading skills. I noticed a change in the package. There was a stylized picture of none other than the king himself... Elvis Presley. I am American,  so who am i to judge who Resees uses as their spokes person. (FYI Hershey Company... hes dead... ) But then the absolute worst thing that could have ever happened occured!.... Yes... inspired by Elvis Presleys favorite sandwich (totally rumored) they have incorporated Banana cream into the flawless original Peanut butter cup. :-(

I too was saddened by this discovery. But apon dwelling on it further. I realized we as Americans need to stand up for our rights. Who ever said the Peanut butter cup needed to be "altered". Who said anything needed to be added or subtracted to the already perfect recipe? Yes they started getting creative with the "white chocolate version" I even turned my head and preteneded not to notice the "carmel" addition to the Peanut butter cup family. I even didn't discuss in a negative manor that recently they have added a "whips" bar to the collection. But who am I to judge. Even people without teeth, on mechanical soft diets deserve to know the taste of heaven a smooth peanut butter cup can provide.

But now my friends. They have gone to far. Bananas... in my peanut butter cups?!?!?! What on earth are these no talent ass clowns thinking? Where does it end? First Banana cream, and next road tar? Will the madness ever cease? ... As long as i have a free voice in this country I Erin Belden vow to not take this lying down! We as Americans have the right, and are almost required to stand up and unite our voices in protest. We Will NOT let this happen. This is AMERICA!  If Banana Cream was supposed to accompany peanut butter draped in a wonderful milk chocolate shell then it would have been done years ago!

We must remain strong, a united front. Which is why I am asking (as if i need to) for any and all of you who read this to join me in the fight against the Hershey Corporation and go on a Peanut Butter Cup Hunger strike until this matter is resolved. If you are truly serious about this please message me your email address and I will be sure to forward you the strike agreement, and literature. I will also need your email to quite possibly send a copy of the petition.... I hope it doesn't get this far. Friends, Family... Countrymen... I look forward to your support in this fight against corporate America. And always remember... If your not with me..... Your against me......I look forward to hearing from you.... God Bless

poor you

Without anyones request... i have decided to move over a couple of my other random blogs... mostly because they make me laugh.. .and i enjoyed reading them again. and maybe you will just enjoy reading them again too... if you haven't already... then you are SOOO far behind on my nonsense... and maybe someday you will find yourself with an extra 40-50 minutes that you need to find something brainless to do..... so you're welcome! :-D

Hawaii Blog 3....May of 07

Madagascar Hissing cockroaches

Alright just when we thought Hawaii was the place for us to live forever. Did you know that there is not one single snake on the island of O'ahu? That right there is enough to get me to stay. The weather is amazing, it rains everyday (supposedly) but I have only seen it rain twice since i have been here and both showers didn't last more than 10 minutes each. Apon arival Lucas did warn us about the Geckos everywhere and they do have giant cockroachs. He showed us one that had been sitting in a lantern outside. Then it just disapeared, he said he had killed it. That was day one. Since then i have seen a couple more, mostly dead, I did find one in the utility sink right next to the washing machine theother day but had since seen it filled with water that the cockroach appeared to be dead. But for some reason.... Emily keeps finding them. A couple nights ago when emily was taking her shower she called my name, I dont know what she thought i was going to do about the situation but she informed me that a cockroach had scurried accross the floor. I wouldn't even go in to look at the darn thing. So I got Lucas and he went in there and smashed it with his shoe that he was wearing, wiped it off with some toilet paper and flushed it. YUCK! I was not nor did i want to be a witness to this event. Then last night! Everyone was in bed and drifting off to sleep scattered around the house. Emily again geting out of the shower came running and or called my name and informed me that something was looking at her from under the sink. Again... I didn't know what she thought I was going to do about it. So i told her to go get the bottle of roach killer, which she did. She came back in and i kept telling her she found it, she should kill it! She freaked out, and since we still were very sunburned she had her pj shorts an a tank top on. So armed with a towel shield and a can of roach and ant killer she started to inch closer and closer, I told her to read the directions because we might have to shake the can of poison! And we might only get one shot and if we were supposed to shake it first now was the time to do it.She did shake it and slowly inched closer to the giant roach which was mocking us but sitting just under the sink on top of a drawer and waving its 7 inch long feelers at us... ok so they may have only been  inches... but you weren't there! you don't know! they were ginormous, the closer she got the more neverous she got and turned to me and said ":CAN I PLEASE GO GET JOSH?!?!?" i kinda laughed and said you can go ask him. He was the unfortunate one whose light was still on. So emily politely knocked on his door and informed him that there was a giant cockroach in the bathroom and she was just too scared to kill it. He being that fabulous nice person that he is said sure no problem. He came in grabbed the roach killer and went to work, when he saw our visitor in the bathroom, he said "omg... its the size of a rat",I only watched for a brief period of time while Emily waited in Lucas bedroom just off from the bathroom. Josh Blasted it in the face with the roach poison and said "Sorry bug.......wrong house" at which point the roach either fell or scurried into the drawer. There were some more short blasts of roach killer and then i stepped back because i really didn't want to see what happened after that. We heard some rustling around and some thumping... we were hoping Josh was winning the fight with the 3 foot cockroach but we just weren't sure. After one final thump Josh emerged from the bathroom toilet paper in hand and said "the coast is clear". He was our hero. With a sigh of relief we felt the balance of the house had been shifted back in our favor. At which point we decided we should be taking some more ibuprofin for the pain of our sunburns. Having no water Emily bounced out throught the living room and into the kitchen where there were no lights on to get a bottle of water to help swallow our pain aid. She flipped on the light to make sure there was no roach awaiting her arrival on her water bottle. To her suprise there was another roach stairing her down nestled between the oven and the sink staking his territory on the tile of the kitchen floor. She grabbed her roach free waterbottle and fled to the bedroom to consult me on what to do. We decided since the roach was between us and anything we could use to kill and or capture it, he had won this battle. We then sat up for quite a while devising a plan on what we would do should we have another showdown with a roach, seeing how we were going to be "home alone" for a matter of hours the next day. Crushing them with your shoe seems like the obvious solution. But lets review... we both brought sandals and or sneaker shoes that only cover 40% of our feet. We do not know what breed of cockroaches they are. Do they jump? do they fly? can they play possum and have us fooled? We just dont know and those are too many risks to take. Emily researched cockroaches online this morning and found many homemade ways to kill and rid your house of roaches. Lucas' roommate Kenneth listened as we informed ourselves about our newly aquired enemies and plotted our revenge. He just looked at us in disbelief about 90% of the time. He kept saying... just crush them, thats the only way to kill them, then flush them down the toilet. Emily arguing with him said "it said that you can't kill them with your sandals" at which point he cut her off saying "IT SAID???,......Ive done it!" laughing at their bickering, i continued to listen to Emilys findings. All in all we have decided on our plan of attack. As we find these giant crazy scary, ugly, gross looking giant cockroaches we are going to place a contaner, glass, gladware, or whatever we have over them, set a heavybook on top of that and wait for one or more of the sailors to return home. After all.. what is living with 5-6 sailors good for if not swearing, making gay statements, and rid-ing the house of giant roaches? I fear the war has just begun between us and the cockroaches.

Hawaii Blog 2.....May of 07

Hawaii

Hey all, Sunburn still not feeling so hot. haha...anyway, We have been very busy here on the island of O'ahu. after our adventures with the bikes. Lucas' roomate Brian (for some reason i will never understand) gave us a book of maps and some hand written directions and a couple small hand drawn maps to get us to where we needed to go. Then said to us "We need to leave here no later than 6:45am....so you girls do whatever you need to do to make that happen" So Emily and I (for some reason I will never understand) were wide awake and yammering on to each other at 5 am. We finally got up about 6am and got ready. We were waiting on the couch fully dressed by 6:25 and Brian got up at 6:30. We drove around the island where I had to take directions on how to get back to where we were going for the next day. We went to pearl harbor and picked up Brian's friend Tim. From there we went to drop Brian off at the site of his pressure test. At this point a very sweaty short, ugly man who had been running for what looked like miles walked by the vehicle all stretching. Emily and I both looked at him and said "Ick" he was way out of proportion to hisself. His shoulders were WAY to broad for his waist and it was just gross. Minutes later Tim came back out and said... hey did you see the bachelor? LMAO that was teh bachelor!?!?!? We laughed and told tim what we thought and he kinda laughed. We would have given our roses back at the FIRST ceremony.... or at least the first one after we saw him with his shirt off.... anyway... brian said his good byes, told us good Luck, and from there Tim was to drive us to his house where he was going to take all of Brians gear, and go back to pick him up with his own car. On the way to tims house there was a slightly awkward moment when Tim was like "so... how do you guys know brian?" ..."ummm we met him sunday?" he looked a little puzzled as to why Brian would be giving his car to complate strangers, but didn't argue. When we pulled up to Tims house he got all of his stuff as well as brians, handed us the keys to Brian's 2002 Landrover and we were off. Following the maps brian had given us and drawn for us we ventured out into the great island of O'ahu. Where we stopped at the Dole Plantation, took pictures of pineapples growing, ventured through the gift shop/snack bar and then went on our way. The mountains and beaches on this island are amazing! We drove all the way up the north shore and stopped to take some pictures along the way. It was gorgeous! Brian was such a good direction giver and we found our way around amazingly well.... until we had to find the H-3 highway. We were nervous about the whole thing because Brian showed us where the traffic circle was. Anyway looking for the highway somehowe we totally missed somewhere we needed to be and ended up on likelike highway. Knowing full well we shouldn't have been there we drove through a small tunnel and tried to figure out a way to turn around.We finally did and ventured back and with Emilys amazing driving techniques and my fabulous navigational skills we made it back on to H-3!! And somehow completely bypassed the socalled traffic circle. And we made it all the way home! with little to no problems! We were both very excited! So then we were home safe and sound. After that the next day we had a very busy schedule. We took the Landrover to the grocery store which we found without a problem with directions for Kane, hauled it directly to the US Postal service to buy postcard stamps, went to jack in the box for a breakfast sandwich, then to TCBY for some countrys best yogurt. Then we rushed back to the house to eat our yogurt and fill out some postcards. From there (again with Brians amazing directions) we raced....well when i say raced i mean went 4-5miles below each and every speed limit on the island) to the Aloha stadium the home of the Rainbow Warriors for a swap meet. I was a little aprehensive to be out in the sun especially since our sunburns are still pretty uncomfortable, but the swap meet turned out to be a great place. Emily and I bought some new bracelets, small pieces of luggage, and some t shirts. We were very impressed with ourselves. Brian told us we could haggle with the people selling things, but when we were buying things no more expensive than $5.00....we couldn't see trying to haggle them down any lower. After that we found briand and lucas at the local Big K, and returned his vehicle completely unharmed!! We immediately regretted a couple things we should have bought at the swap meet and when Brian got home and said "show me the goods" we told him that we kinda wished we went back.  so he said he would bring us back sunday! yay for brian... alright more to write later!