Tutorial: How to make Pie Crust Cookies

Things you will need for this project:

Ingredients:
1) Pie crust - Use your own recipe, or go here for a basic recipe that is yummy.
2) Melted butter
3) Cinnamon
4) Brown Sugar

Supplies:
Baking sheet
Rolling pin
Brush (for brushing butter on your cookies)
Plastic bag
Cooling rack



Don't you hate it when you make beautiful pie crusts, they are all ready to go, and you look in the bowl, and there is still pie crust. You don't need it for your pies, but you really don't want to throw it away. Well, the perfect small treat to make with it is: pie crust cookies.


Take the last of the pie crust dough and roll it out. You want it about the thickness of a regular pie crust, or maybe a little bit thicker.


Once it is rolled out, get out your cookie cutter and cut out the shape(s). I suggest a smaller shape so that the crust is less likely to crumble or fall apart on you.


After you have them cut out and put on a baking sheet (I lightly greased it with butter flavored baking spray), then brush a fairly thick coat of melted butter onto the crust.


You then can start putting on the cinnamon and sugar mixture. I don't put it quite out to the edge, since the butter will help it spread out as it cooks.


To make it easy I mix the cinnamon and brown sugar in a bag, and then just shake it up. This is a snack size bag. For 13 cookies I used 4 tablespoons of brown sugar and a teaspoon of cinnamon.


Once all of your cookies are covered with the brown sugar and cinnamon, you are ready to bake them. Depending on how hot your oven is, you may want to play around some with the cooking time. In my old oven it took 5 minutes at 400 degrees, but today when I made them in my mom's oven, it took 7 minutes at 400 degrees.


When you pull them out of the oven, let them sit on the pan for about 5 minutes before you move them. Moving them too early tends to make them crumble and fall apart.


Once the cookies have cooled for 5 minutes, you can transfer them to a cooling rack. Another 5 minutes and they are ready to eat!


I think it goes without saying that you do not have to make pie crusts first. You can make a whole batch of pie crust cookies, instead of making some of the dough actually into pie crusts.

If you aren't going to eat these cookies the same day, I suggest putting them in a Ziploc bag, about an hour after they come out of the oven. If you put them in sooner, they tend to get soggy.

Happy Holidays to all! I hope you enjoy making these. Feel free to link up with your pie crust cookies, or just leave a comment to tell me how they turned out, or what shapes you and/or your kids made!

Tutorial: How to make a Pomander: Easy holiday fun with your kids!

If you want the full back history of pomanders, then click here for the wikipedia explanation.

For everyone else, I will just say that as kids we made these, mostly to be used as ornaments or decorations, and that I always loved the smell. I was trying to think of something fun to do with the kids, that wasn't too expensive, and would help us get in the holiday spirit, and this is the project came to mind.

I was inspired, partly by the Fred Meyer ad this week, which had the mandarin oranges on sale, right next the the half price spices. (Yes, my brain works like that. The two main ingredients are on sale, so maybe we should do this.)


Here is what you will need to get started:
Whole cloves
Mandarin oranges (or other citrus fruit)
Something sharp to cut/poke with (We used the skewers we use for making barbecue shish-ka-bobs in the summer.)
A baking pan
Preheated Oven (200 degrees)


I also suggest having some little bowls to put the cloves in and a tablecloth that can easily be washed after the project is done. (Read here that I mean: juice is going to get on the table cloth, so you really do not want the beautiful lacy one that your grandmother gave you on the table when you are doing this project.)

Depending on the age of your kids, you may want to put aprons on the kids as well.


Since we were intending for these to be decorations, which do not need to last beyond New Year's, we were pretty lax in how we decorated these. Some of the instructions I have seen tell you to keep the holes you poke approximately 1/4 - 1/2 centimeter apart. With 8 and 10 year-old hands, we did not attempt that. I let the kids each have a skewer, which poked a hole the perfect size for inserting a clove. The kids made a variety of designs.

Two things to note at this stage.

1) This gets juicy. You may want to warn your kids that they do not want to poke towards their eyes, or get their eyes too close, and that having a way to easily wipe or wash hands (like baby wipes or a damp towel) can be important if you have kids who are picky about their fingers being sticky.

2) The holes "disappear" after the skewer has been pulled out, especially if the rind of the orange is fairly thick. Making a few pokes with the skewer, and then filling them with cloves worked far better than trying to do the entire decoration worth of pokes, and then going back and finding all of the holes to insert the cloves into



Each of the kids did about five oranges in half an hour. We used the entire five (5) pound box of mandarins, and almost the entire 1.12 ounces of cloves. If the kids had wanted more elaborate or clove intensive designs, we would have run out.


After the designs were finished we put them on the baking sheet. I preheated the oven to 200 degrees, and we tried to space the oranges out so they weren't touching.


We baked the oranges for an hour. When they came out the smell was wonderful, just like I remember from when I was a child. They took about an hour to cool down to the point where the juices weren't oozing out when you picked them up.

When I looked up ideas online, there seems to be a heated debate about whether you need to do the cooking part in a paper bag or not. As far as I can tell, you either need to let it cure in the oven like we did, or cure in a paper bag for two weeks. Since I didn't have two weeks, we opted for the oven. Curing in the oven had the added benefit of making the whole house smell wonderful while they were cooking. If you want to join the "purists" and use a bag while cooking them, just be aware that a few comments about trying this method included warnings about bags catching fire. That was enough to steer me away from using a bag in my oven.


This is Joshua with his now cooled Orange Pomander. My kids decided they just wanted to have them as "yummy smell" decorations, and not turn them into ornaments, but it would be easy to add some ribbon (make it like a basket to hold the orange with a loop at the top) and make ornaments to hang on your tree.

**A quick reminder that it isn't too late to get in on the drawing for the button purse. Just go here, and tell me about what you are doing to serve this season!!

How, and Why, to Make Your Own Menorah

I am not Jewish, but one of my grandfathers was, before he joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. His family hadn't been very observant when he was a boy, and he married a nice Catholic girl, so there were not a lot of Jewish traditions that were part of his adult life. However, he did tell me about how much he liked Hanukkah, especially the menorah and the presents they got each night of Hanukkah, when he was a boy.

Even though we don't celebrate all eight nights of Hanukkah, I do try to light a menorah with my children each year, and share with them the miracle of the oil in the temple that should have lasted for only one night, and instead lasted for eight. I used to have a very nice menorah, but alas, I did not get it in the divorce settlement. I bought a cheap one when I was living in Bend, but after the second year we used it, it was broken. When I as pregnant with Maddy, I forgot all about celebrating Hanukkah with my children, and last year we played dreidel for Hanukkah, but we didn't light a menorah.


This year I decided that we needed a menorah, and to celebrate both our Jewish and Christian roots. I spent a good part of the day looking for a menorah, but couldn't find one. After visiting eight stores, and calling several others, I gave up trying to find one, and instead decided to make one.

My mom went with me to Michael's, a local craft store, and we came up with this DIY menorah. Before we went I looked up what the essential parts of a menorah were. Wikipedia had a good basic explanation that you can find here.

The basics for a menorah are that there are eight candles that represent the eight days of the miracle, and then a ninth candle, called the shamash that is used for lighting the other candles. The shamash should always be at least slightly higher than the other eight candles. Traditionally you would start the first night by lighting the shamash and one other candle. Each night of Hanukkah you light an additional candle, until on the eight night, all nine candles are lit.


Here you can see that I got a nice (and on clearance) set of silver tray, and placed four votive candles on each one. Some blue ribbon draped around gives it a Hanukkah flair, but is easy to take off and use for other projects later. The shamash candle holder have a blue ribbon tied in a bow and a silver candle that will be relative easy to light the other candles with.


We are only going to celebrate Hanukkah for one night, so we will light all nine candles on the same night. We will do it as night falls, and the candles will burn for at least an hour, as tradition dictates. We will also say the three Brachots, or blessings, as we do it. (This is the simplest website I found for explaining the brachots. I especially like that this site has recordings so that you can hear the brachots being sung.)

As you can see from this "aerial view" we have nine candles, and the shamash sits higher than the other eight. I enjoyed seeing a variety of non-traditional menorahs, when I was researching on the web, before I tried making my own. (To see a few of my favorite "unusal menorahs, click here or here.) The variety of designs was pretty amazing. My menorah is not nearly as creative as many I saw, but I think it will do well for our family, and I will be able to use the elements of it in Christmas decorations, and throughout the year.


For all of my friends, family members, and readers who are celebrating Hanukkah, I hope that we will all remember that we still live in a time of miracles. After all, isn't Hanukkah about the love of God, making sure that His holy temple would stand as a light to the Jews when they had just defeated an oppressive ruler, and were trying to rebuild their nation? If we apply this to our lives, we can know that God is always there, even as we fight against Satan and his attempts to destroy us. Perhaps the greatest miracle we can receive is the love, hope and peace that God gives us as we pray to him, even in times of great stress or trial.

Happy Hanukkah!
May the love of God bring you
peace, love and the blessings
you most stand in need of!

** Don't forget, it isn't too late to enter the fudge giveaway!