What's a Christmas Gram? I want one!

They worked and are kinda cute! Melting Snowman Cookie recipe below.

One of the things I miss most on the road is not cooking. Ever. Eating out is so fun, but close your eyes and ponder this: eating out almost every single meal for 4.5 months. Yeah. It gets a slightly old. Plus, I gain lb's. (Dear collegians, y'all are just so wonderful and I love all the restaurants you take me. Part of the job :) You take excellent care of me--thanks for everything!)

So this little Southern belle is happy to be back home cooking eggs for breakfast, making sandwiches for lunch, and just shuffling around a kitchen that includes more than a microwave, sink, and paper plates.

I tried my hand at Melting Snowmen Cookies that I saw a picture of on a blog last week, and they're so yummy! There was no recipe on the blog, but it's pretty easy to figure out. I advise a tall glass of white wine when you get to the decorating part. And patience. Lots of patience... And lock up any bird dogs that may get annoying.

Perfect Sugar Cookies Recipe

(So this my buddy Jay's mom's/my mother's BFF's recipe. Straight outta the Trinity Presbyterian School cookbook. Go cats GO.)

+ 3/4 c. butter or margarine

+ 3/4 c. sugar

+ 2 large eggs

+ 2 3/4 c. flour

+ 2 tsp. baking powder

+ 1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 400°. Cream butter and sugar. Beat in egg and vanilla and baking powder. Add flour one cup at a time. Dough will be very stiff. Bake on top rack of oven 6 to 7 minutes, or until cookies are light brown. Roll and cut out, using cookie cutters. For best results, before rolling out dough, chill dough or use flour that has been stored in freezer.

Royal Icing

(This one I totally did off the top of my head, combing a few recipes and making things up, ha. This is what I THINK I ended up doing. Any good royal icing recipe will get the job done.)

+ 2 1/2 c. shifted confectioners sugar

+ 1 c. whole milk

+ 4 tbsp. butter or margarine, softened

+ big marshmellows for their heads

Combine confectioners sugar, 1/3 c. milk, and butter in a bowl. Stir until smooth. This is when I got creative: you'll need to judge the stiffness of the icing and LITTLE BY LITTLE, pour in the milk to make the icing more runny. I hate that word. But you know what I mean.

Leave 3/4 of the icing white, and remove a fourth. Divide further and dye into whatever colors you want to decorate the snowmen. The plastic bag trick works best: put the icing in little baggies and cut a teeny-tiny hole at the tip. For the "black" icing, I melted dark chocolate chips and poured the chocolate into a plastic bag.

Cut the big marshmellows in halves and stick onto royal icing puddle before decorating.

Well, if we need Halloween cookies I know what to do.

I made a few snowmen with surprised faces, but do you see how he looks so sad and scary and Scream-like? Clearly, I opted for smiley faces instead.

Have fun!