Home Baked Happiness

It's the last day of March, and the day before Easter. My son came over for Easter dinner tonight because he has to work on Easter.  He loves chocolate chip cookies so I decided to make minty M&M and chocolate chip cookies for him to take home along with his ham and mashed potatoes left overs. I found these minty M&Ms at the local Wal-Mart at the beginning of March and I knew they would be perfect for one of my "All Things Peppermint" recipes.  Green is my favorite color and this variety of greens just makes me feel all happy inside! I used my go to chocolate chip cookie recipe for these cookies and added peppermint extract along with the vanilla extract, and substituted one cup of minty M&M's in place of one of the two cups of chocolate chips. Here's what you need to get started: 2 sticks butter softened 3/4 cup white sugar 1 cup brown sugar 2 eggs 1 teaspoon Peppermint extract 2 1/4 cups flour 1 Teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon

It's  March, and March means green.  These green minty cupcakes are supposed to be flavored with mint flavoring, but I adapted the recipe and used peppermint flavoring instead. I served these cupcakes last week  at our church's monthly Community dinner. My friend Dan, who always comes to help out at our monthly dinner, samples my cupcakes and gives me very useful feedback about my little cuppies.  This time he commented that he thinks this one is my best cupcake yet!  That of course made me very excited and happy to share this recipe with you!      Now I think I have said this before, but there is no shame in using a box cake mix. I do that frequently as it is much easier to make, and often box mixes taste better than what can be made from scratch.  There are exceptions of course, carrot cake, peanut butter cake, banana cake, are always made from scratch. But chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, lemon and lime cakes from box mixes taste great when you Doctor them up just a li

 In Southern California we are finally getting some winter weather. Last December at Christmas time, it felt a whole lot like spring with lots of sunshine and 80 degree weather. And now that we're into the middle of March it feels a whole lot like winter, cold and rainy.   There's finally even some snow on the mountains. All this chilly weather has inspired me to make Peppermint Snowballs. They didn't start off looking like snowballs, they started off looking very red and velvety. Not until they got rolled in the powdery, sugary, yumminess did they start looking like snowballs. And the peppermint makes you feel like you're in the winter holiday months. But I think any season is a great time for peppermint! Here's what you need to get started: 1 cup of butter softened 1 and 3/4 cup of powdered sugar separated in half 2 and 1/4 cups AP flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons Vanilla extract 1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract 1/3 cup crushed candy cane

I have definitely never made blondies before. And I'm not quite sure if I've ever eaten a blondie before. So I was super excited about making them for the first time.   I was pleasantly surprised that they baked up perfectly my first time out!  They are easier to make than brownies because they seem to bake more evenly, and once they're cooled they are easier to cut.  Here's what you need to get started : 1 cup melted butter 2 cups light brown sugar  2 eggs 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract 2 1/2 cups flour 1/4 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 cup chopped Andes mint thins  1/2 cup crushed peppermint candies 1/3 cup chocolate chips This time of year it's a little hard to find mint chocolate chips on the store shelves. I looked online and discovered that you can order them from Amazon for more than  $10 a bag! That's a ridiculous amount to pay for an 8-ounce bag of candy.  So I perused the Easter