Julie Surprise: Apple Stuffed Snickerdoodles (Experiment)

This baking endeavor actually took place back on February 13, 2012 . . . I was trying to come with some sort of non-traditional but still Winter appropriate Valentine's Day treat. I believe the thought of using apples came out of  necessity, since we'd bought something like twenty-five pounds of extra apples from Bountiful Baskets that month. So any way to use them, besides just eating them as is, seemed like a good idea.

I first thought of making little pies, but I'm honestly not a huge fan of pie crust. Finally, after looking at all kinds of recipes for inspiration I thought maybe I'd just make some roll out gingerbread cookies and then stuff those with apples. This sounded pretty good to me, but when I went to look in my Mother's recipe book, I couldn't find her recipe for roll out gingerbread in it anywhere! My parents were out of town for my nephew's birthday so I couldn't just call my Mom and have her send it to me. However, in searching for the gingerbread recipe, I kept going past the snicker doodle recipe and wondering if that would work at all.  Snickerdoodles are not roll out cookies, but it seemed to me that maybe, just maybe I could make it work.

They seemed to cut out okay with the help of wax paper and keeping the dough and the marble rolling pin chilled.

I could have made the apple pieces a lot smaller, but I thought larger chucks would be yummy and sort of refreshing in the midst of the richness of  a Snickerdoodle.

 

Of course I tried to get all fancy with the pie-esque vents I cut in the top of each cookie.

 

They really didn't come out as pretty as they went in though.

 

Which wasn't saying much in the first place. . .

So even though I gave up on cutting fancy vents

they still were not the prettiest Valentine treats I've ever seen . . .

The little one's were kind of cute though, and my goodness!

These were really tasty cookies!

I also made some more heart boxes, like the ones I helped my kids make and gave a few of the best looking cookies away to a couple of friends as a thank you for really helping me a lot out in that past little while. 

(Giving me rides when I didn't have a car and/or babysitting my kids on ridiculously short notice.) 

Needless to say, I really felt like I should do something nice for these ladies . . .

I wish I had taken a picture of this one when it was filled. I decorated it to match the thank you card I chose for it. It had a cute drawing of a cat in a field of flowers, many of which looked like the heart shaped ones in the stamp I used. My friend Susan really has a thing for cats so I thought she'd like it. I also filled it with pink gingham print tissue paper, to match the gingham heart and ribbon on the box.

I wish I had also shown the card that inspired this design. My friend Tenaya seems to really like vintage styles and such, so I chose a vintage style card with a drawing of a little girl wearing a blue gingham dress with a white apron and bonnet, carrying a basket of bright peachy-pink roses. Hence, I use the blue and white ribbon and lace, the pink roses and the pink gingham ribbon stripes. It was really fun to make these little thank you gifts and I really hope these ladies know how much their help really was appreciated.

Susan told me that the apples inside the Snickerdoodles really surprised her! So I guess it is fair to say it was a Julie Surprise recipe. She raved about them though and said they were really yummy. 

I rather thought so too, though maybe next time I can find a way to make them prettier as well. 

Heart of Roses

Last year at this time, I noticed that Joann's had some pretty heart shaped wreaths for Valentines, all covered in roses.  I loved the idea!  However, I did not love the price tags, so I sighed and walked away, but as I continued to see them on trips to that store, the wheels in my head began turning . . . I looked at them critically and finally decided that I could make my own and make it better. Or at least, more to my personal taste.

Thereby arose my quest to find a heart shaped wreath base for making my own heart shaped rose wreath.  I looked at all the options out there and it took some effort because heart shaped bases are hard to find. When I did finally find some the bases were often just as expensive as the finished wreaths, and to add flowers and such on top of that didn't seem to make sense.  Finally I decided to purchase a fairly inexpensive tinsel-heart-garland wreath. Like this one.

Next, I proceeded to unravel all the garland off the wreath.  I saved the tinsel and now drape it around the ceiling of my front room or Valentine's, but I really purchased this wreath for it's frame.
Then I chose some roses.  It was difficult to estimate how many I would need but I made my best guess and bought some lovely pink rose buds with pretty clear glue drops on them that look like dew.

Then I tried to figure out how I was going to attach the roses to the sparse frame and still make it look good.

At one point while looking for inspiration on-line I saw some wreaths that were covered in ruffled ribbons.  I liked this idea and figured I could use ribbon to fill in any gaps in my roses.  So then I was on the hunt for ribbon, but it too was a bit pricey for how much I figured I'd need, especially if I ended up gathering it.  Luckily, I discovered some lovely hot pink spools of silk ribbon at my local dollar store.  I began stocking up on those every time I went there but it took a while to accumulate what I thought my be enough, and even then I had my doubts.

By this time Valentine's Day had passed and my enthusiasm for my idea had waned considerably . . . So the wreath frame hung in my sewing closest and the roses resided in a basket in the corner of my room until this February rolled around.

I have no idea why the wreath seemed so difficult when I wanted to do it last year.  This year, I guess because the problem had been stewing for so long, I just picked it up and knew what the answer to all my problems was.  Hot glue.

I didn't have a hot glue gun, but finishing a year old project seemed like the perfect excuse to justify buying one for myself.

As it turned out, I didn't have enough roses . . .

 That was okay though, because they still carried the same kind at Joann this year.  (Though honestly, the new ones seemed a tad cheaper fabric and I noticed there were six roses per bunch instead of seven. . . . Hmmm.)
At any rate, I decided against the ribbon ruffles as I wasn't sure how that would look or even really work, and just went with lots of roses and a ribbon bow.

I actually should have bought just one more bunch of roses. I could use six or so more to fill in some remaining gaps, but all in all, I'm pretty happy with my very rosy Valentine wreath, and pleased that I finally finished a project!

Go me!

Happy Valentine's Everyone!

~Julie :}

Update: 2/19/12 Mo' Better Pictures -- :}