Delicious Apple Cider

I got this recipe from my sister this morning and couldn't wait to try it. It's so good! It was the perfect drink to cure my sweet tooth, warm my bones on a cold evening & made my house smell like fall. One thing that I love is that it tasted just like this smells. It's pretty much the same ingredients except for the cider and sugar. It's the perfect twist on cider.

2 cinnamon sticks
1 tsp whole cloves
1 tsp whole allspice
2 qts apple cider which is 64oz
1/c c brown sugar
1 orange sliced

enclose cinnamon sticks, cloves and allspice in cheesecloth, creating a little bag. In the photo can you see my bag floating under the oranges?

Pour cider and brown sugar into crock pot. Stir and let it warm up until brown sugar is disloved. Add cheesecloth bag. Slice up one orange and put slices in crock pot.

Cover and cook on low for 2 to 3 hours.

Discard spice bag and serve.

Pumpkin Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting

Cookies

3/4 C sugar
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
2 Tbsp maple syrup
2 eggs
1 C canned pumpkin
2 1/2 C flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp nutmeg
pinch ground cloves
pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 350

Cream sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Add maple syrup and eggs mix well. Add pumpkin and mix well.

In a separate bowl sift together flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and cloves.

Add the dry ingredients to the batter and mix well. Don't over mix though. Drop spoonfulls of batter onto ungreased cookie sheet and bake for about 11 minutes. The cookies don't even out and become perfectly round. The batter pretty much stays the same shape and size as they cook so watch them closely. 11 minutes is pretty much all they need.

Cool on racks and then frost with this recipe...

Cream Cheese Frosting


In a mixer cream 2 (8 oz) pkgs cream cheese, 1 C powdered sugar, 1/4 C Milk,1 Tbsp vanilla and zest from 1 lemon. Not the whole lemon but 4 good sized spots. The lemon adds the perfect zing to the frosting but you don't want too much!

CTR Towels

Okay, I know this blog has been so dead lately. I'm slowly getting things back in order to get posting again.

I wanted to post this though. In our church I was just called to be the teacher for the CTR 7 class. That means that all the kiddos in my class are the ones that will be baptized when they turn 8. So, I wanted to find something special to make for them. A long time ago I saw this tutorial on one of my favorite blogs,
Made With Love and Glue and put it in the back of my brain (and also bookmarked it on the computer) as a fun thing to do as a gift for someone. Anyways, I made it for a girl getting baptized tomorrow.

It was such a fast easy project and pretty much the same thing as these but Rachel has a great tutorial here, and there is also a really cute poem that goes along with it, of course not pictured here. Here is the one Rachel did on her blog...

Such a fun gift to give!