Happy Birthday To Me

so, today, to celebrate my birthday, all I really wanted to do was bake Valentine's cookies. Yesterday and today both, actually. Yesterday morning, I began my day by mixing up a batch of shortbread cookie dough for coconut thumbprint cookies. After running a bunch of errands, doing

laundry, cleaning house, paying bills, etc.,

I returned home and promptly burned an entire two pounds of whole pecans in the oven. I was burned too, needless to say, but I didn't let that put a damper on my good nature. I forged ahead and changed my plans from pecan shortbread hearts to plain shortbread hearts. I whipped up cookie dough batch #2 and stashed it in the fridge to chill. I happily rolled batch #1 into balls, dipped them in egg wash, rolled them in coconut and placed them on parchment lined trays. After making a thumbprint in each cookie, I carefully filled each depression with a tart and delicious cherry and a dab of preserves from a jar of Smucker's cherry preserves. Anyway, long story longer, while multi-tasking as I prepared dinner, I burned the third pan of thumbprint cookies and survived a fast and furious meltdown as the doorbell rang upon the arrival of my mother-in-law, Betty Jean, who stopped over bearing gifts and Valentine treats. After a glass

of Pinot Noir and some laughs to extinguish my flames, we talked about past kitchen disasters (and other laughable memories), I washed the dinner dishes, re-grouped and rolled out the dough for batch #2. Time was not an issue. I was on a mission to bake.

So, I rolled and cut and

baked and washed more dishes until about 1:30am. That wasn't bad, right? I made hearts, doves, more birds, "x"s and "o"s, plus little tear drops. This morning, first thing, I made cranberry walnut oatmeal cookies.

I later dunked some of these into chocolate (just in case anyone wanted to make one cookie into an entire meal). LOL. By the time I finished baking the oatmeal cookies, I was anxious to melt

chocolate and start dipping and decorating the shortbread cookies. What a fun way to spend my birthday morning, I thought! I had this vision of delicate pink on dark chocolate although

I wasn't sure if I would be able to write clearly and neatly onto the cookies (which are fairly small) with melted chocolate.

It was great fun

and since I had a tough time deciding which photo to post here, I decided to post a bunch of pictures to share my day with you. I did eventually make it to work by 2:30pm with some "foofed" up sweet samples in tow.

Amore from Katie in . . .

KATIE'S PASSION KITCHEN or . . .

Katarina's Passione Cucina ~

Baci Baci