• HOME
  • {A}’s Chipmunk Training Archives

 Homepage

  • The Homestead
    • Home Projects
    • Home Improvement
    • Home Decor
      • Seasonal Home decor
        • FALL Home Decor
        • WINTER Home Decor
        • SPRING Crafts and Creations
        • SUMMER Crafts and Creations
    • Our Chickens
    • Gardening
    • Organization
    • Re-Purposing
    • Furniture Refinishing
    • Budget
  • Crafts & Creations
    • Seasonal Home decor
      • FALL Crafts and Creations
      • WINTER Crafts and Creations
      • SPRING Crafts and Creations
      • SUMMER Crafts and Creations
    • DIY (Do-It-Yourself) Project
    • Kids Arts and Crafts
    • Homemade/Handmade Gift Ideas
    • Holiday Crafts
    • Fan Pulls
    • Free Printable/Downloadable
    • Sewing Projects
    • Giveaways
    • Business Features
  • Recipes/FoodFun
    • Breakfast
    • Lunch
    • Main Dish
    • Sandwiches
    • Appetizers
    • Slow Cooker
    • On The Grill
    • Side Dishes
      • Soups
      • Salads
    • Baking
      • Breads, Rolls and Muffins
    • Snacks
    • Treats
    • Desserts
    • Drinks
  • Homeschooling
    • Elementary Homeschooling
      • Elementary Homeschooling READING
      • Elementary Homeschooling MATH
      • Elementary Homeschooling LANGUAGE ARTS
      • Elementary Homeschooling SCIENCE
      • Elementary Homeschooling HOME ECONOMICS
      • Kids Arts and Crafts
    • Middle School Homeschooling
      • Middle School Homeschooling SCIENCE
      • Middle School Homeschooling HOME ECONOMICS
    • Language Arts
    • Math
    • History / Social Studies
    • Geography
    • Foreign Language
    • Field Trips
    • Games
    • Nature Study
  • The Big Picture
    • Life In General
    • Celebrations
    • Faith
      • Into the Light; The Series
    • Giveaways
    • Reviews & Sponsors
  • Photography & Lettering
    • Photography
    • truck lettering
    • vehicle graphics
    • Newborns
    • Kids
    • Engagement
    • High School Senior Pictures
    • High School Senior Pictures Sneak Peeks

Olivia’s Scrumptious Ginger Cookies | Printable Recipe

March 24, 2017 By Laura 2 Comments


I never considered myself to be a fan of the ginger spice. But somehow when my daughter Olivia (14 – the girl of the triplets) makes her ginger cookies . . . . I take one bite, and there’s a party in my mouth! I think it must be just the right amount of ginger, combined with the butter. Whatever it is, it can be hard to stop from having another.  And if no one is looking, another. We don’t have treats like these around the house often. But when we do, they are homemade, and it’s a treat indeed!  In fact, anytime Olivia bakes or cooks for us, which is frequently, it’s a treat!  As I type up this post, she is actually packing up to head out for a cooking competition for the weekend! She’s got some real skills, and you can taste them in these cookies. (Like everything else she whips up for us!)

We’re giving you Olivia’s Ginger Cookies recipe today. There’s a printable version at the end of this post. 
So, you can make some for yourself, and thank us later.
–

Olivia’s Ginger Cookies


[Read more…]

Filed Under: Baking, Desserts, Recipes, Snacks, Treats Tagged With: Baking, cookie-recipes, cookies, ginger-cookies, ginger-cookies-recipe, printable-cookie-recipes

Let Us Eat Dessert!

December 2, 2015 By Laura 115 Comments


Do you have dessert very often in your family?
There is no time that I have been more reminded that our time as one family under this roof is dissipating fast than when the six of us have been gathered around our table, having a meal together. As a mother, I just don’t want to ever let these days go. So meals together have been something we have always done, and it has always been important to my husband and I, and I believe to our children too. Though the meals have felt rather usual in our day-to-day routines as a family for years, I knew they were memories in the making. Instant treasured memories….the day one or more of those seats were empty, because life moved on.
Well, life moved on this year, when [Read more…]

Filed Under: Desserts, Home Page, Recipes, Reviews & Sponsors Tagged With: Desserts, family dinner, family-time, pies

Simple & Savory Homemade Applesauce (Recipe)

October 13, 2014 By Laura Leave a Comment

With the Fall season, comes apple season!  And we all know there are innumerable wonderful and delicious things, that can be made with apples!
They really are a fruit of so many gifts. But some recipes take a lot more ambition, than others!
If you just want to enjoy the simplicity and goodness of apples, while still having a great celebration happening in your mouth, than this applesauce recipe is for you!
Applesauce is also a versatile food, that can be used in so many different ways. We’ll talk about there here, too.

 

  • 4-6 pounds Apples, Peeled, Cored, And Cut Into 8 Slices
  • 1 cup Water
  • Juice Of 1 Lemon (or 6 shakes of Lemon Essential Oil)
  • 1/2 cup Brown Sugar, Packed
  • 1 teaspoon Cinnamon or Cassia, More Or Less To Taste

(*Optional Ingredients: Nutmeg, Maple Syrup, Allspice, Butter)

It’s This Simple:

1. First, we always recommend you begin with washed, organic apples, if possible.
What kind of apples? That’s up to you! But varieties of the sweet and soft kind, are best when making applesauce. In this recipe, we used all McIntosh apples, and so can attest to the goodness of an applesauce made with that variety!  But [Read more…]

Filed Under: Desserts, Recipes, Snacks, Treats Tagged With: apple-recipes, applesauce, fruit-recipes, fruit-sauce-recipes, healthy snacks, healthy-treats, homemade-applesauce, lemon-essential-oil-recipes, recipes

A Great Pie Taste-Testing! | $50 to Williams-Sonoma

December 21, 2012 By Laura 35 Comments

All about PIE!   This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Mrs. Smith’s. All opinions are 100% mine.

 

Say “I” if you love pie!  And if you love free money, you can put some whip cream on top of that! This should be a fun post for you. It sure was for us!
Recently, Mrs. Smith’s asked us to try their new Mrs. Smith’s Signature Deep Dish pies, and also sent us a sweet prize to give away too.

$50 to spend at Williams-Sonoma!

I’m actually one to bake my pies from scratch. But in a crunch, Mrs. Smith’s is my store-bought pie to fall back on!

My husband and kiddos love pie from anywhere, so they were all over this one! So I thought it would be fun for them to have a great pie taste-testing!
And guess what? No one disagreed!
Imagine that.


Our eager pie-tasting contestants. The kids were napkin-bibbed, with forks and fists.
They were ready to stuff their pie-holes.
(Pun intended.  ; )
Here’s what Mrs. Smith’s was dishing up for us:

Signature Deep Dish Cherry Pie with Butter Fudge Sauce
Signature Deep Dish Peach Pie with Cream Cheese Icing
Signature Deep Dish Dutch Apple Pie with Caramel Sauce
Signature Deep Dish Pumpkin Pie with Cream Cheese Icing

And the kids got tasting, all of them!
And I just took photos . . . . . .



Time to switch plates.


Discerning the flavor.


They were loving every minute!

And you can bet Michael/Daddy was off-camera to the side, tasting them all too.


And also having fun designing some more with the sauces and icing.

Afterwards, each one of the kids wrote down their reviews on all 4 of the pies they tried, in one of my many notebooks.


They were so cute and serious about it. Like real little food critics.

 Here are some of their comments:
“The peach pie tastes great, and the cream cheese topping was better than I thought!”
“One reason I liked the apple pie is because the apple and caramel blend perfectly together.”
“The peach filling was sticky and gooey, which made it even better!”
“The cream cheese icing was a good choice for the sticky peach!”
“I liked the pumpkin pie. The spices taste good with the pumpkin.”

You can learn more about Mrs. Smith’s Pies on their Facebook or follow them on Pinterest


So the pie-tasting began so late in the afternoon, that the kids pretty much had pie for supper.  I did have them eat at least a small and healthy meal afterwards, just so I would feel better about it.
And then their Daddy took me out to dinner. And we had a wonderful time.

 NOW……. who wouldn’t be interested in winning this?!
Yes. A $50 Gift Card to Williams-Sonoma.  And with it, I will also send you a coupon for a free Mrs. Smith’s Signature Deep Dish Pie of your own.
Someone is going to win. And it might as well be you! Right?

You can shop, and then have some pie! That’s what I’d call a good day. ; )

Sorry -This Giveaway has ended.
Just follow the requirements below, and you can consider yourself in it, to win it!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

GOOD LUCK TO YOU!!

Visit Sponsor's Site

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Filed Under: Baking, Desserts, Giveaways, Recipes, The Big Picture Tagged With: Mrs-Smith's-pies, pie, pie-tasting, Williams-Sonoma

Pumpkin Shaped Cookies | Recipe

November 1, 2012 By Laura 14 Comments

00

It’s the first day of November, and we’re still riding high on the beauty of Autumn all around us! I think we’ve done more baking than ever this year as well.  I had an idea about trying to make some pumpkin shaped cookies, using a dough recipe I already had, and they came out so great!  These are beautiful cookies to have around on Thanksgiving, or anytime during the pumpkin/Autumn season, and they were fun to make, too.  It may seem like a lot of steps, but it is easy, and the dough recipe itself is very useful!

The dough is the same recipe from my God-Mother’s Italian cookies, found here in a post called Cookie Love.  It’s a very I am going to give you the recipe right here as well, but you really can see how it is made at the other post.  *Please note; you can mix the ingredients to make dough with a Kitchen Aid Mixer, but we did not have one at the time of the other post, so we did it by hand. For these pumpkin shaped cookies, we did use the mixer since we have one now. It’s just easier and faster with a mixer, but still doable by hand.

Ingredients

  • 4  C Bleached All Purpose Flour
  • 1  C Sugar
  • 2 Tbs. Baking Powder
  • 4 Eggs
  • 1/2C Land-O-Lakes Margarine
  • 4 Tsp. Vanilla Extract
  • 1/4 C Milk
  • Confectioners Sugar
  • A Little Extra Milk for Glaze
    . . . . . . and some kind of Coloring.

Which brings me to this stuff . . . . . .

01_icing_coloring

Wilton’s Icing Colors.
Even though it says for icing, it works for any food coloring. I love it, because it IS concentrated.  It gives a nicer color, and is more potent, so it gets the job done easily.  Food coloring drops to me are a pain. It takes too much to get the depth of color you want, and adds a water content at the same time that you may not want. So this stuff is the bomb for me. It’s what I used to color my cookie dough orange. It is also great for icing, and we use it for that in this recipe too. ; )

1. In a large bowl (or your Kitchen Mixer bowl),  put in flour, sugar, baking powder, eggs, margarine, vanilla, and milk.

2.    Mix it all together with fork at first. Once it starts to form, you can use your mixer or clean hands.

3. Flour a counter or big board.

4. Remove dough from bowl, and knead for several minutes, sprinkling the surface more if the dough starts sticking.

5. Grease baking sheets with vegetable oil. (You probably can use Pam Spray…if you’re a fan of that.)

02

6. Once your dough is formed, it’s ready to color. Using a toothpick, mix up the orange container of coloring gel, and just wipe the toothpick onto your dough.  Then fold it in and knead the dough some more until the color works through and is uniformly mixed into the dough. Add more color as needed to get the desired  density of color.

** Two Things to Note Here:  A) This gel will likely stain yours hands and/or clothing a little, so use kitchen gloves and an apron is your concerned with that.  B) The color will lighten/fade a lot after baking.  So keep that in mind. Although the dough may appear too dark orange, they won’t be when done. (See photos of baked cookies for reference.)

7.   Grab a piece of dough, and begin to roll into a ball between the palms of your hands.  You want it to be about the size of say….a large cherry tomato.  You can place them directly on the cookie sheet, or keep working on a floured surface, such as a cutting board.

8. Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees.

03_how-to-make-pumpkin-shaped-cookies 9) First poke your finger down into the center of each orange dough ball.

10) Then, taking a toothpick, stand it up beside the dough ball, and press in your indentations for the pumpkin grooves, as seen above.

04_how-to-make-pumpkin-shaped-cookies Make the indentations deep!  Really lay that toothpick in there, and rock it to the top, so the grooves are made all the way to the top.  The cookies will puff while baking, and you will completely loose your groove indentations if you don’t make them deep pre-baked.

05_pumpkin-shaped-cookies They should look similar to this when the are done.   My little girl Olivia was a great help forming the pumpkins!

11) Now transfer to cookie sheets with  thin metal small spatula if need be.  (Try not to squich your pumpkins, as the dough is soft!) Place the dough pumpkins on the cookie sheets,  about an inch 1/2 apart, staggered.

**You will have more pumpkins waiting for their turn in the oven.  This dough makes at least a few dozen, depending on the size of your cookies.

12) Bake full sheets for 8-10 minutes.  You want them to be pale – not browned, but if you are wondering if they are cooked enough, open one with knife and see if it is baked through well. If not, put back in for 1-2 minutes more, depending on how doughy they still were.

13.  Remove from oven………and then place them each on a cooling rack.

  For cookie glaze:
14) In a small bowl, pour some confectioner’s sugar, and add a little milk.  I don’t really measure the sugar or milk here.  I recommend adding one tablespoon of milk at a time, and stir well. You want the glaze thick, as it will be much easier it will be to work with if it is not thin and runny.. You will be surprised at how much powdered sugar you need!

15) Add in green gel coloring and mix well.

16)  When cookies are completely cooled, transfer your green icing to a piping bag with a very fine point tip, or if need be, a zip-lock bag with the very tip of the corner snipped off.

17) Just pipe on a stem in the center top of the pumpkin, a leaf if you are really good, and maybe make some curly vines coming off.

06_pumpkin-shaped-cookies As you can see, my piping skills could use some practice.  But I thought they came out so adorable, and they are as delicious as the Italian Cookies recipe! It’s all the exact same ingredients, except for the tasteless coloring.  What I love about this dough recipe, is it is flexible to make many different looking cookies.

Alexis kept some of the dough before it was colored orange, and made these traditional cookies. . . . . .

07_italian-cookies Also quite Autumn looking!
The cookies can be sealed in an air tight container, or even put in the freezer the same way, for a coming holiday, or unexpected company.

We hope you try this recipe out, and have some fun making them yourself. Your mouth will surely thank you!

. . . . . .

 Come follow me here and there:



Save

Save

Filed Under: Baking, Desserts, Fun Food, Recipes, Treats Tagged With: Autumn-cookies, Baking, cookie-recipes, cookies, cute-cookies, Fall-cookies, italian cookies, pumpkin-shaped-cookie-recipe, pumpkin-shaped-cookie-tutorial, Thanksgiving-cookies

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Next Page »

We are wicked happy to have you here! We hope you find much inspiration, help, humor and enjoyment here.




Archives



POPULAR POSTS

* * * * * *

SUBSCRIBE to House of Joyful Noise blog! Every new post, delivered right to your email box!


Privacy Policy

Amazon Affiliates

Never at any additional cost to you, we may earn a small commission for our endorsement, recommendation, testimonial, and/or link to any products from our website. Your purchase through our links helps support our family, while sharing with you the products we authentically use and recommend, for various ideas, and letting you know where you can purchase them. Thank you for your support!

[footer_backtotop]

Copyright © 2025 HouseOfJoyfulNoise.com · Genesis Framework by StudioPress