Thursday, December 22, 2011

Coconut Snowballs and Coffee Filter Snowflakes

Every year we make and decorate Christmas cookies to bring to our friends and neighbors! This year is no exception!! But the people we have always brought cookies to have changed!! We usually would bring cookies to our apartment neighbor, our doormen downstairs, the office ladies in our apartment building, and close friends!! It makes me miss them thinking of bringing cookies to them in previous years!!
Well, we have made good friends here in Oklahoma and have been here almost exactly 1 year!! Can you believe it? And each year we pick different kinds of cookies/fudge/goodies to make and give to people. I can't give away all of what we have made this year yet, but this is one of the recipes!! I found this recipe for Coconut Snowballs in an old Family Circle magazine from 2008!! I doubled the recipe and decided it didn't look like enough, so I doubled the recipe again since I had everything out already! It was pretty easy and went quickly once I got going!

Coconut Snowballs Family Circle Magazine 2008

1 cup sweetened flake coconut
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar
Pinch salt
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 teaspoons milk

1. Grind 1/2 cup of the coconut in food processor. Chop remaining coconut and set aside. Add flour, 1/4 cup of the confectioners' sugar and the salt. Pulse to blend. Add butter and vanilla; pulse until dough comes together.
2. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Roll dough into 1-inch balls. Place dough balls 1 inch apart on an ungreased baking sheet.
3. Bake cookies until firm but tender, 15 minutes. Remove to rack; let cool completely.
4. In small bowl, stir together remaining 1 cup confectioners' sugar and enough milk until smooth but still thick. Dip cookies in glaze (about 1/2 teaspoon for each), letting it drip down sides. Dip in chopped coconut and set aside for glaze to dry.



Coffee Filter Snowflakes

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am not very crafty. I have to push and stretch myself to do crafts with Maddy; to find them, figure them out, and buy the materials. It does not come naturally to me. But we have done pretty good since last year with preschool, where we had a lot of crafts to make going along with the curriculum we had! Madelynn is super crafty and so I have to get outside my box and do crafts with her! It has been good for me...and her!

I found this tutorial on Coffee Filter Snowflakes via Alicia's Homemaking via Made By Britta via Pinterest via Under the Big Oak Tree.

Did you catch all that? Well, the actual website to click on is Made by Britta which is where you can find a step by step tutorial for how to make these easy, fun, cheap snowflakes to decorate your house and windows!! They were really fun to make and Maddy had fun cutting different designs and making different patterns on each one!!

It was super easy, and I think we are going to make more for our big front window!! All you do is fold a round coffee filter in half, then in thirds and then get creative cutting different designs in each one!! They all come out totally different, and it's fun for little ones who are old enough to use scissors!!! Fun winter craft!!

Well, we are almost to Christmas and I will be happy when all the to-do lists are done and we can just relax as a family on Christmas!! Tad has a 3 day weekend including Christmas off from work, so it should be glorious!! Not to mention that Judah turns 2 on Christmas Eve so we have a birthday party this weekend too!! He is getting so big! Check out other adventures at aliciashomemaking.com!!

3 comments:

  1. Fun! Those snowballs look yummy!

    This is a beautiful blog!

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  2. We did the snowflakes for our windows too! but not the coffee filter kind because we don't drink too much coffee around here, but there are some cool patterns out there.

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