by Zooey and Joseph…
Have a safe and happy New Year’s Eve!
Your attention please: Photographic Supurbness
National Geographic Photo Contest: Honorable Mention for Nature category Location: Biei, Hokkaido, Japan. (© Kent Shiraishi)
Photography buffs, click the beautiful photo above for the link to the 2011 National Geographic’s Photo Contest winners and submissions. If you’re off today, you can allow yourself to get carried away (who am i kidding, even if you’re working you can spend the day there!).
This one is by Kent Shiraishi and I just love it. The color and crispness of the trees just makes me want to stare and stare. I’d love to go there and see this myself.
I finally got a flash for my camera for Christmas. I used it yesterday for the family Christmas and it really makes a difference – no washed out faces or unflattering shadows. So Excited for the 2012 Monthly Theme Challenge- the flash will open up a world of new subjects.
And if you’re here, you share a silly sense of humor too – Another link to waste some time with- “Kim Jong-Il Looking At Things“.
Enjoy your Boxing Day!
Dear: World Wide Web
- From keith & denise
or Happy Hanukkah
or Happy Solstice
or Season’s Greetings!
or just have a nice Dec 25th :)
Christmas Week = Christmas Cookie Swaps
Sunset Magazine Dec 2011
Christmas time means cookies. Lots and lots of cookies. Every year, a few of my co-workers do a cookie swap. These are the cookies we love, but only make around Christmas, so they’re extra special.
Sunset magazine had these delightfully festive cookies on the cover this month and it was obvious to me that these would be my choice for the swap this year – right? How festive & adorable are they?
The cookie is a meringue, but baked until crisp on the outside, and chewy on the inside. White chocolate chips and crushed candy cane add full flavor and you feel quite satisfied after one of these!
The recipe has you fold the crushed candy canes in with the white chocolate chips. The first batch I made, doing this caused the meringue to “pink” slightly. I think I crushed the candy cane too finely, causing it to be more of a powder. But I wanted to pipe them into the shape seen on the magazine cover, so they had to be small. The next batch, I decided to use Peppermint Extract and not add the candy canes into the “dough”. I just sprinkled the candy cane on top before baking. That worked better- the meringue stayed white, but the extract made the flavor too strong. And the white chocolate chips still clogged up the icing tip (I was using a large circle tip and had to insert a skewer frequently to push the chips back up). So my uniform little blobs weren’t so uniform.
The next batch I make, I’ll do the following -
- Use a smaller circle tip- maybe 1/2″? What size do you think they used on their cookies?
- Chop with a food processor the white chocolate chips before adding (smaller chunks that won’t clog my big circle icing tip).
- Process the candy canes less and add big chunks on the cookie after they’re piped on the sheet.
- Halve the peppermint extract and double the vanilla extract.
- Actually do the dark chocolate bottoms (I skipped this part for all batches, but I think it adds a nice finishing touch – third time will be a charm!).
These are festive and cute little cookies and the most important part- DELICIOUS!
My not so perfect looking White Chocolate Dream Drops!
Other recipes I found that tickled my fancy:
Mocha Buche de Noel (yule log) -(Better Home & Garden) someday I want to try this…
Tannenbaum Cupcakes - with 2″ of frosting piped into a tree! (yea, you need to love frosting for this one!)
Candy Cane Trifles – so cute!!
Your “1 hour or less” Christmas Shopping Solution
That’s right. Christmas is a week away and perhaps you’re still trying to figure out what to get a few people on your gift list. The stress is building up and the $5 Starbuck’s cards are becoming more and more attractive, if not completely original.
Not knocking the Starbuck’s cards- they’re practical and useful and your recipient won’t have to rearrange the living room to accommodate it. But perhaps you did that last year?
What if I told you that you could gift an unlimited amount of people for $7 and be done in an hour?
Behold: My 2012 6×4 Photo desk calendar. I’m selling the full resolution, non-watermarked version for $7- no shipping! I’ll email you the files. You unzip them, submit them to your local 1 hour photo center (or print at home in less time!), as many copies as you like*, find a narrow edged frame while you’re waiting for the pics and BAM! Finished! If you have a little more time and energy left after this exhausting hour of shopping, you could mouse over to “Splash of Something” and find a cute wrapping idea for the calendar!
To purchase: email me at denise [@] geekgirl415 [dot] com with “Purchase Calendar” in subj line. I accept Paypal only. Orders accepted until Friday Dec 23, 1pm (pst). I’ll accept orders again after Christmas starting Monday Dec 26.
*For personal use only- including gift giving. The copyright and creator info is in the digital file and creative license belongs solely to me. While my regular readers understand this, there are people out there in the world who are not clear on copyright laws, thus requiring me to state the obvious: purchasers cannot resell or submit these photos as theirs to any contest or photo gallery (online or actual photo gallery). Thank you!
