So like I've said before i LOVE to bake! I love finding recipes and making pretty desserts! So here is the latest! these are mint cookies... kinda like thin mints! They are pretty rich! Here's the recipe! Give it a try!

Makes 3 dozen

• FOR THE COOKIES
• 1 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg, room temperature  
• Confectioners' sugar, for work surface
• FOR THE GANACHE
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 6 ounces semisweet chocolate, very finely chopped
• 3/4 teaspoon pure peppermint extract
• FOR THE GLAZE
• 6 ounces semisweet chocolate, very finely chopped

Directions

1. Make cookies: Whisk together cocoa powder and flour in a bowl. Put butter and granulated sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Mix in egg until well blended. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture; mix until just combined. Divide dough in half, and shape each half into a disk; wrap in plastic. Refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour (or overnight).
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Transfer dough to a work surface lightly dusted with confectioners' sugar. Roll out dough to 1/8 inch thick. Cut out cookies using a 2-inch round cookie cutter; space 1/2 inch apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Repeat with remaining scraps of dough. Bake cookies until firm, rotating sheets halfway through, 10 to 12 minutes. Let cool completely on sheets on wire racks.
3. Meanwhile, make ganache: Bring cream to a boil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Add chocolate. Cook, stirring constantly until chocolate is smooth. Stir in peppermint extract. Let cool slightly, 10 to 15 minutes.
4. Spoon 1 teaspoon ganache onto the bottom of 1 cookie; sandwich with another cookie. Repeat with remaining cookies and ganache. Refrigerate until firm, about 10 minutes.
5. Make glaze: Melt chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, stirring constantly. Let cool slightly. Dip one flat side of each sandwich into melted chocolate to coat; gently shake off excess. Place sandwiches, chocolate sides up, on wire racks set over baking sheets. Refrigerate until set, about 15 minutes. Cookies can be refrigerated in a single layer in airtight containers up to 2 days.
6. I added sprinkles for fun ;)

 -assilem

a totally random assortment of events of late...

So a few things to mention... the pic above is one random night steve and I decided to dye our hear for fun haha nothing crazy just a tad darker brown.. I thought the bags on our heads were reason for a photo... haha 

 

So this pic is the injury I acquired from an x-acto knife... hurt so bad... cut a huge chunk out of my finger... it hurt... bad... I'm a klutz... that's all there is to it

 

So I was complaining about not having shoes one day and my mom laughed and said ok ill buy you a pair of shoes for every pair you throw out.. I couldn't believe how hard it was to throw out shoes i don't even wear... i have attachment issues i guess.. so here they are... the poor unwanted shoes...

 

Steve and I made some homemade dry ice Rootbeer for one of my classes. It was so yummy! I had to go buy a dowel (which as you can see was way too long) to stir the rootbeer and make sure the dry ice didn't stick to the bottom.

So I like to bake when Im bored

So I was really bored last night when Steve was finishing his final paper... so I decided to make something yummy.  I dont know why but i love to bake! Probably not the best for my figure but hey its fun! So I made chocolate cupcakes and Steve and I frosted them and made them bugs. I thought it was fun!

Lasagna Disaster

So....a few Sundays ago we were having a nice family dinner... that is until I came along.. So my dad spent the morning making two lasagnas.. (he makes the most amazing lasagna in the world. He uses 4 kinds of cheeses.. man its just..YUM) so he made one lasagna with extra cheese... my dad hadn't got a lot of sleep so I offered to help him with dinner.. All I had to do was wait for the timer to go off and take the tin foil of the top of the lasagna..sounds easy enough. So as I'm pulling off the tin foil off of the extra cheesy lasagna some sort of oven rack catastrophe happened and the pan slid off of the rack onto the oven door I almost reached to grab the boiling glass pan as it careened out of the oven onto the floor.. for a split second i thought it would be ok...nope..think again just when i thought id be able to save it and no one would ever know the lasagna slid out of the pan onto my dads new chef mat... hahaha I screamed pretty loud...a word i shouldn't have.. I ruined it.. of course every one came to see what had happened...my brother was freaking out asking my dad how clean his rug is...so he could still eat the cheesy lasagna... at least there were two... so we still got to have our dinner... just no leftovers... another clumsy Melissa moment haha

-assilem

I like to share thoughts and Ive decided i should do more of that... I love the book Tuesdays with Morrie... I don't know why I can just read it over and over again, but I love what it tells me every time.  There is always something different.. something I could be doing better, someone I could love more fully, something I could do to help somebody else. I love the selfless person Morrie was. Such a wise man! I love some of the things he addresses. I particularity connected with this part of the book. I have been rather annoyed at the state we all live in... so obsessed with all the things we can buy and how they make us feel. 

"These [are] people so hungry for love that they are accepting substitutes. They [are] embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back. But it never works. You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship... I can tell you, as I lay here dying, when you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the feeling you're looking for, no matter how much of them you have."

I love the wisdom in that. We really have become a society obsessed with money and monetary things. "My neighbor has this car maybe I should have a nicer one." "My friend wears these kind of clothes maybe i need to go buy this or that so i can be like them." I know I do it... you'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't think those things, at least occasionally. I wonder what life would be like if we really could just live without caring about any of that stuff.. it really is just stuff.. What if we could walk around and just appreciate who we are.. instead of comparing ourselves to the girl/boy sitting next to us. We all have something important to give. You don't need money or fancy things to show someone how much you care about them or how much you appreciate them.

-assilem