A Homemade Life, May 16

I have been saving up a few things for this Homemade Life post... things that I've done in the past couple of weeks.

Homemade cookies are one of my favorite things. I love baking cookies! When my kids were in boarding school, I made sure they had cookies to take back to get them and their friends through the week. Sadly, I don't bake cookies as often as I used to, because if I did, we would eat them. But every few weeks I will bake a batch, give some away, and freeze the rest. These are the ones I made most recently.

This particular recipe is a favorite of mine because it is a homemade knock-off of a favorite bakery cookie I loved as a child. These crunchy, melt-in-your-mouth cookies had little veins of toffee in them. Over the years I tried to find a similar recipe but had no success. This one, which I improvised from another recipe I found, comes pretty close.

CRUNCHY TOFFEE CRACKLE COOKIES

1 cup butter-flavor Crisco®
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup toffee baking bits*
Sugar for dipping

In mixing bowl,cream together shortening and sugar. Add egg and extracts. Sift together dry ingredients and gradually add to the creamed mixture, mixing thoroughly. Add the toffee bits, mixing with hands if necessary. Preheat oven to 350º.
Shape dough into 1” balls; dip tops in sugar. Place on parchment or teflon-lined sheets.

Bake at 350º for 12 minutes or until lightly browned.

Makes about 4 dozen cookies.

* When I made these most recently, I only had about a half cup of toffee bits on hand. So I chopped up some butterscotch chips to add to them. It worked out very well.

In other homemade goodness, I also finished a lavender beaded bracelet

and embellished a lavender T-shirt with matching beads

for my 6-year-old granddaughter. Sadly, the bracelet wasn't quite big enough and I have to remake it. But I can do that, especially now that (as of today) I have finished my gigantic writing project! (Still need to proofread and print, but all the writing is DONE!)

Another thing I did was trim this doll blanket for another granddaughter. A friend had given me the crocheted piece that forms the basic blanket. It was something she had just done as crocheting practice and she thought if I added a pretty edging it could be a doll blanket. So I did.

And then, last but not least are some homemade cards which I sent out for Mother's Day. I had these blank cards with a "bath shoppe" theme

as part of an assortment, but had never used them. An idea came to me for the perfect saying to make these into Mother's Day cards, so I printed it out 2 to a page, cut them out and glued into the blank cards.

I was very pleased with how they came out.

If you would like to see other homemade ideas, be sure and check out Life on a Back Road. You will find lots of inspiration there!