Neighbor Gifts

This year I thought it would be nice to reach out to the people in our subdivision. I really felt we have been so blessed this year and that we should share those blessings with our neighbors so I enlisted the help of a stamper friend of mine (Ann) and we made cute cookie packaging on Wednesday and then on Thursday we made these awesome Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies!

These cookies have become my husbands fav cookie (even over oatmeal raisin!) since they are so simple to make and they have NO FLOUR to upset our digestive track! When I make them for him only I use Skippy Naturals peanut butter, but (heavy sigh) I am having a problem with stomach pain when I eat the Skippy Naturals (and Jif Natural is totally out of the question) so I have had to resort to making my own peanut butter from the grinder at Freddy’s. This is fine for me, but (again heavy sigh) those nuts MAY have been processed on equipment that also processes SOY so that means hunny can’t have them!!! What a mess, but I make them for him since it is almost impossible to find cookies for him in the store that have no gluten, soy or dairy and I CAN have the Udi’s Snickerdoodles from Stawell Health over in Twin Falls.

Here is the recipe hunny’s co-worker gave him, she is always looking out for us gluten free recipes (her son also has food allergies) so you too can make some of these YUMMY cookies for the holidays – and HEY instead of using fork tines to mark them try using our Cookie Stamp set (with the snowflake here for the winter) dipped in some C&H Superfine Baking Sugar to keep from sticking!

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

(from REAL SIMPLE magazine – Holiday Baking – slightly edited by me)

•  2 cups creamy peanut butter
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 cup granulated white sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt

Heat oven to 350 degrees, line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. In large mixer beat all ingredients until smooth. Shape dough into balls (by 1 tablespoon) or scoop dough out with your cookie scoop and place 2” apart on baking sheets. Mark with forks in criss-cross pattern OR using your handy dandy Stampin UP! Cookie Stamps you can gently press them down imprinting stamp image onto cookies. Bake one sheet at a time for 10-15 minutes until golden brown, allowing to cool on parchment – cookies will deflate as they cool, and your stamped image will return to look AWESOME on your special cookies!

So to make the cute packages for these fab cookies Ann & I used the Big Shot and the Scallop Circle Bigz die to cut out our package toppers. We then randomly stamped snowflake images from an old old set in tone on tone and accent colors. Ann also stamped in Baja Breeze, Cherry Cobbler and Old Olive ink on Whisper White CS 2 images from the Sweet Seasons stamp set. Those were then added with a dimensional to the folded scallop circle that I wrote along the edge on the back sides “from your neighbors @ 209 Teton”. We tore strips from our INCREDIBLE fabric (this is Candy Cane) to make hangers for these cookie bags, so that incase our neighbors are not home when hunny and I go visiting we can just hang it on the doorknob and hope the neighborhood dogs don’t find them first lol

When hunny got home from work on Thursday he looked at them and said “they need candy canes” funny man – why didn’t he say anything about that before! So today we went to town and got some candy canes and now instead of tonight taking them out, we will head out tomorrow and deliver our goodies to all our neighbors wishing them many blessings this Christmas Season!

I will also be taking some of my mini-catty’s for Thrity-One helping to promote my Virtuous Woman (from Proverbs 31) biz and hopefully get some orders for the fund raiser Thermal Tote sale (www.mythirtyone.com/nancyhorn) to help with the local food banks to stock “allergy friendly” supplies.

I am also busy working on the graphics for the next UStamp round “SCORE 2012” and hope you will be able to join me on Dec 30^th for that AWESOME event! Did you enjoy the free Blog Hop event earlier this month – wow weren’t there so many incredible holiday projects??? This upcoming event has projects that use our FABULOUS new Simply Scored scoring tool that premiered in the Holiday Mini (which ends soon so get your order in right away for any of the stamp sets you can’t live without – no guarantee which ones will turn up in the catty in July!). Next month the Occasions Mini and Sale-A-Bration start so be on the lookout for those catty’s to post here as soon as its legal :)

If I don’t post before – please have a wonderful time celebrating the birth of our Savior Christ the Lord, HE is the reason for the season!