Peppermint Hot Chocolate Cookies

Thanks for visiting! You may have found this post through Pinterest, the Great Food Bloggers Cookie Swap, or Metro Edmonton... yay! Please stay a while and check out some of my other cookies, like the Lemon Cranberry Pecan Oatmeal cookies or -if marshmallows are more your schtick- there are Chocolate Stout Marshmallows topped with crushed pretzels, among other treats and treasures. Enjoy!

When word spread about a cookie exchange for food bloggers, I paused... could I pull this off? Could I be creative and produce a cookie that would make a food blogger also pause? I've so enjoyed making sweets and treats for my friends and family that I wasn't even sure why I was concerned! I gave my head a shake, surfed on over to the sign-up page, and signed myself up!

Let me say... I am so glad that I did that! Thoughts of the cookie that I would create took over my thoughts. I scribbled ideas onto scrap paper and post-it notes. I made several trips to the craft stores to find appropriate packaging. I eagerly made and mailed my little care packages, then waited in very eager anticipation for the arrival of cookies in my mailbox and my cookies in the mailboxes of my fellow bloggers. 

This whole exchange really put me into the holiday spirit but also challenged me to come up with a creative and new cookie to share... it kick-started the rest of my Christmas baking and introduced me to a community of bloggers that I found so inspiring... A big thanks again to Lindsay of Love and Olive Oil (and her Chocolate Sandwich Cookies with Malted Milk Chocolate Buttercream) and Julie of the Little Kitchen (and her New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookie). I can't wait for the next Great Food Bloggers Cookie Swap.

Eats & Smiles

After all of the appearances on blogs and Pinterest,

I have been trying to come up with

my perfect version of the pumpkin spice latte.

Current attempts feature my own pumpkin spice blend,

pumpkin puree, milk, espresso and vanilla... still tweaking.

I received my first batch of cookies from the

Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap.
Thanks, Carole at theyumyumfactor.blogspot.com!

More photos to come with the full cookie post next week.

 Both the cookies and the lattes have been a treat

while I work away on my Christmas offerings at the dining room table...

Outside the window, the birds on our bird feeder and on the ground below

are a delightful distraction, for me and for the cats.

Not so much a smile then but rather one for the memories, 

my Santa figurine (that I've had since wee) plummeted from the shelf above the television

to a shattered demise below. A few tears... then back to it.

 Another glorious weekend... 

Doug, Charlie and I trekked about the snow and trees and bridges.

Eats and Smiles.

Peppermint Marshmallows

I have been on a real marshmallow kick lately. It's partially because I am obsessed with my Christmas baking but also because of the cold weather... what better to make than hot chocolate with marshmallows (as evidenced in my Eats & Smiles post last week).

In addition to those two very compelling reasons, I had one other very exciting reason for the marshmallow making... I signed up (a few weeks ago) for a food bloggers cookie swap! This swap was the brainchild of Lindsay of Love and Olive Oil and Julie of The Little Kitchen. What a great way to connect with a very vibrant food blogging community and share your wares!

They will be doing a round-up of all of the swap recipes (I will include a link once the recipes have been posted). You can also follow #fbcookieswap on Twitter to see some of the action unfold!

While I cannot yet share my cookie swap recipe here (come back on the 12th!), I can and will share the Peppermint Marshmallows with you!

Eats & Smiles

By way of introduction... I have been wracking my brain to come up with something special to celebrate my 100th post. Many bloggers enjoy "Wordless Wednesdays" and share photo posts with few or no words accompanying them. As I am a woman of typically MANY words, I will likely opt for the "few" as opposed to the "no" but thought this might be a great new wannafoodie feature that will help me to share with each of you and alleviate the pressure of coming up with a new recipe in order to blog. Let's face it... there are some weeks where I eat pizza or taco salad nearly every day (albeit homemade but that wasn't necessarily blog-worthy).

So, thank you for reading... and being part of my wannafoodie world. Time for me to be silent(ish) and just share the things that make us smile... in food and in life.

A day not too long ago...

Charlie, our 11 month old black lab

Doug and the retrieving puppy.

Me, trying to be an outside person.

A day more recent...

Butternut squash soup with goat cheese, balsamic caramelized beets and vino.

Hot chocolate with homemade peppermint marshmallows.

Eats and Smiles.

Chocolate Stout Marshmallows

Last year, a great night with my girlfriend Caitlin parlayed into a guest post and some very pretty festive treats over the holiday break... Pretty, swirly red, vanilla kissed marshmallows made their way into the hands of fortunate friends and many a mug of steaming hot chocolate.

This is one of two times during the year that I am interested in marshmallows... generally, I'm not a fan. BUT during those cool, dark nights around a campfire in the summer OR the frigid winter while curled up on the couch under blanket and cuddling a mug, I could eat marshmallows until the sugar coma hits.

Winter has only recently hit and already I am in marshmallow mania. While grabbing supplies at the grocery, I did nab that tiny bottle of peppermint extract (which I will probably not find again in a few short weeks when everyone is Christmas baking up a storm) for some future marshmallow making... otherwise, it was the regular suspects before grabbing a bag of pretzels then heading across the street for our new star - beer!