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.
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