Sharing a little Christmas with our soldiers

Procrastination is my middle name.  Ugh.....   I have lots of good intentions for getting projects completely on my time line but ..... not happening over the past few weeks.  One good thing I did accomplish is finishing packing the boxes for our men and women serving overseas.  It is just a small thing that I am able to do for the brave men and women serving our country who are away from their families during the holidays.


Sooooo..... I went to anysoldier.com to get ideas of what the service men and women would need, hit the stores and here's what I got for each box I am sending out. 

Each box has a variety of items for 3 soldiers.  Some essentials, reading material/magazines, gum, candy, a Christmas stocking, and hot chocolate. 

Can't have Christmas without some hot chocolate!

The stockings have some hersheys' kisses - candy cane and mint truffle.  Yum-O.  I love both of these holiday flavors.  A small box of Mrs. Fields candies, and a pack of gum.

Here it is all packed up and almost ready to go.  Just have to write out some Christmas cards to the soldiers.  Then off to the Post Office with my 4 boxes.  Thank goodness for Flate Rate Postage.

God Bless all our soldiers who put their lives on the line for us each and everyday.  Thank you all.

They call them Gobs

So.... don't know what I was thinking but I decided to try out a new cookie recipe for the annual cookie exchange my friend hosts every year.  This year I decided to make Peppermint Whoopie Pies.  They looked wonderful in the recipe and I was inspired to pay homage to my husband's Pennsylvania roots.  Although they call them "Gobs" in Western PA.

It was going great until the cookies went into the oven.  Epic Fail... The first batch came out as one big chocolate blob - not that the teenagers minded since they got to eat the blob.  So the second batch, I made the cookie with a rounded teaspoon (not rounded Tablespoon).  Still a fail, but on a much smaller scale.

top cookie baked on a stone - bottom cookie baked on metal pan.  Not a pretty site.

 

So since these were supposed to be smaller sized whoopie pies, I drastically cut down the amount of dough used for each cookie half and finally got a good sized cookie.  Unfortunately, the cookies seemed to spread out too much while baking.

 

Once the cookies were baked, the fun began.  Got the teenager to smash the mints cause who doesn't like taking a hammer and pulverizing the mints to dust. 

We made some peppermint buttercream frosting (at least that went well) and tinted it red.  Ok - it only came out as dark pink, but still a nice color.  We sandwiched the frosting between two cookies and then rolled in crushed starlight mints. 

Of course, I now had the hubs and the other teenager circling the kitchen and eyeing up those Peppermint Gobs.  They each got one since I needed 4 dozen for the cookie exchange. 

Not the best cookie I have made, but not the worst.  They sure were tasty.

Sorry for the fuzzy photo - camera is on the fritz.