the 12 days of Christmas cookies

Ally, here.

So we've got some exciting news for you. Becca and I are about to embark on the most exciting 12 day journey of the season! We're taking on Food Network's 12 Days of Cookies. We'll bake them, one day at a time, share our baking troubles and triumphs, and probably gain a significant amount of weight.

I had the honor of kicking off the 12 days of festivities with Chocolate Gooey Butter Cookies. Can you take a wild guess which Food Network star created this recipe? Definitely Paula Deen.

These cookies are incredibly simple and require very few ingredients. And they are surprisingly light and fluffy. But beware that the dough takes a few hours of refrigeration before they are ready to bake.

The 12 Days of Cookies- Day 1- Chocolate Gooey Butter Cookies

Here's what you'll need:

-8 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
-1 stick of butter, at room temperature
-1 egg
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-1 box moist chocolate cake mix
-confectioners' sugar

Here's what to do:

1. Preheat the oven to 350.

2. Use an electric mixer to cream the cream cheese and butter together until smooth.

3. Beat in the egg, followed by the vanilla extract.

4. Beat in the cake mix.

5. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours. This will make it easier to shape the dough.

6. Coat the bottom of a small bowl with confectioners' sugar.

7. Roll the dough into tablespoon sized balls, and coat with sugar. (I just rolled the dough balls around the bowl until they were covered.)

8. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 12 minutes.

So here are a few warnings from my experience with these cookies. I'm going to recommend using a spoon to mix in the cake mix, rather than an electric mixer (unless you have a kitchen-aid) because the dough stuck together so much that it completely coated my beaters and rose up to get stuck inside the holes connecting the beaters to the mixers. So that was a bit of a mess that you could probably avoid.

I'll also warn you that the dough is going to be really sticky as you form it into balls. Once you coat it with sugar, it's very manageable, but I had to wash my hands about 10 times during the whole baking process. So be warned.

And my final recommendation is the addition of chocolate chips. I added these to the last batch I put in the oven, and it added an extra burst of deliciousness to the cookie. The husband insists that the cookies were perfect without the chocolate chips, and said he preferred the consistency of the originals, but I like a little extra something in my cookies. So if you're in the mood for chocolate, spring for the chocolate chip addition. It's well worth your while.

Check back soon for more 12 Days of Cookies! You're going to love it!

the deen brothers do it up right.

Ally, here.

About two months ago, a few friends and I went on a Spring Break road trip to Savannah, Georgia. Why Savannah? To eat at Paula Deen's restaurant, The Lady & Sons, of course! Yes, that's how much we love food. We planned our entire trip around restaurants, and let me tell you, we had some incredible meals. I highly recommend a vacation of this variety.

Anywho, these same friends and I gathered last night to cook a meal together, and it only made sense to get back to our roots and use recipes from the Deen family. It turns out Jamie and Bobby cook just as well as Paula (and use a little less butter)! We cooked up some bacon-wrapped chicken breast with chile cheese sauce. Bacon. Chicken. Cheese. Excellent. If you try to make this yourself, I recommend adding way more chipotle hot pepper sauce and Worcestershire sauce, especially if you actually want it to taste spicy. We even added some crushed red pepper to ours. Yum.


And as for our side dish, bite-size tomato and mozzarella tarts. They taste a little like healthy, flaky pizzas. Now, Bobby's tarts were significantly more beautiful than mine (the lack of a circle cookie cutter is at fault here), but mine were still delectable.

The best part of this meal is that it's all super simple. You can make it yourself. And you're going to love it.