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It's that time again!  The Superbowl is here.  Really.  It's right here in Texas.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little relieved when both of Bern Dogg's teams, the Cowboys AND the Longhorns {did I mention we're from Texas} dropped out early.

Finally, I had a fighting chance to watch TV on the weekend again.

However, this weekend's a little different. No matter who's playing, there's no getting out of the Superbowl at my house.  Or a Superbowl party.

I pretty much leave ol' Bern Dogg in charge of  the cooking on Superbowl day.  He does the grill thing.  Ribs, sausage, and steak, while I do all the necessary finger foods inside.

But most importantly, I am in charge of DESSERT.

For some reason, I have been a little blue lately, so this year, I decided to cheer myself up and do a little humorous baking.

Yes, I said humorous baking. So here it is, my humorous take on Superbowl Sunday dessert.  If it lasts til then.

For the chips, I made a batch of my lemon poppy seed roll-out cookies, and tinted them corn-chip yellow.




To make fruit "salsa" follow these instructions:

1 lb of strawberries
4 kiwi fruit
a scant 1/4 c. of sugar

Puree two strawberries and one kiwi with 1/4 a cup of sugar.  Then finely dice the remaining fruit and mix with the puree.  If you don't want to wash your blender, just chop all of the fruit up the day before {meaning today} toss it with the sugar and let it sit overnight.

Either way, you end up with about the same thing.


For the fruit dip, I changed my usual recipe a bit.  I wanted to keep it from becoming overwhelmingly sweet when combined with the cookies, and also to give it a authentic guacamole texture.

All I did was combine one block of cream cheese, softened, with half of a 7oz. Jar of marshmallow cream and an 8 oz can of crushed pineapple, well drained. {seriously drain it WELL}

After that, I tinted the whole mess avocado.  For the record, Americolor really makes a color called avocado, but as a lifetime guacamole eater, I have to say, they are a little off.

It needed a few drops of warm brown and  leaf green to really be considered guacamole. I also added 2-3 TBS of powdered sugar to thicken it up.  I wanted it to look like the real thing.


No, I haven't lost my marbles...it's good.  Really.  Think fruit pizza.

Which, for the record is actually one of Bern Dogg's favorite desserts.  So, I scored a real touch down with this one, and more than a few laughs!

If you want to make things a little easier for guests, you can make them for them, and have a little tray of individual dessert portions ready to go...

I have never been overwhelmingly interested in New Year parties, and the older I get, the more apparent it becomes.  I was SOOOO excited because this year I had nothing to do on New Year's Eve but stay home and try out some of the recipes I have been working on. 

They were all good, but my taste-testers (the Bern-Dogg family)  picked a winner hands down...

I have wanted to test this cookie for a LONG time, but just never had the time.  It made perfect sense to me, since some of my most favorite baked treats like scones and muffins are often this flavor. 

I tried this recipe two ways.  The first batch I iced with lemon royal icing, which is my RI flavored with vanilla and a splash of freshly squeezed lemon juice.


 The bottled stuff is fine, but my next  idea required real lemons anyway, so it only made sense to use the whole thing...



For the first batch, I made black-eye pea cutouts.  They were very tasty, but for the second batch I wanted something simpler, and not as sweet.  So, I decided to top them with lemon sugar. 

To make the lemon sugar, I zested two whole lemons, and mixed the zest with half a cup of light yellow sanding sugar.  {White sugar works just fine, but I was feeling "yellow", so I went with sanding sugar}


  






As far as Bern-Dogg is concerned, if I only made THESE cookies for the rest of forever, that's good enough for him ...

And the best part is, the kids LOVED them.  Surprisingly, they actually preferred these over the iced ones!

However if you are feeling industrious, this would be the PERFECT base cookie for something like this...

Happy New Year everyone!  For real this time!  I didn't plan on posting again for a day or three, but sometimes ideas just happen.

This one came to me while I was doing my pre-New Year dinner shopping. My oldest son LOVES beans. However, the younger two, not so much. Pinto beans are pushing it, so any parent can imagine their HORROR when I mentioned black-eyed peas were on the menu. As soon as I dropped the bag into the basket the yearly, " I am not eating THAT," whine-fest began.

Normally, this would have irritated me, but on this particular day, it gave me the BEST idea. I would TRICK them into eating their New Year staple!

This is what I came up with...

They are black-eyed peas, so they ought to cover the tradition, right?




I was all around unsure about this cookie when I started. First of all, I didn't know how well a black-eye pea would translate to a cookie. There is a very fine line between creative and UGLY. So, before embarrassing myself, I sent a quick phone pic to my buddy, L, and got the thumbs up.  She knew EXACTLY what they were.

Luckily, I happen to own a jelly bean cutter, and even though it always looked like a kidney to me {there IS such a thing as a kidney cookie} I knew it would work perfectly as a bean.

On a BAD note, I might have broken my resolution for no ugly cookies.  Bottom line, black-eyed peas just aren't cute...unless maybe I gave them a face...but, um, not today.

However, since I was experimenting, I tried out a recipe I have been dreaming up for a while now.  I made lemon poppy seed cookies, with lemon royal icing.



I wasn't sure about the combo at first, but they are Bern Dogg's new favorite, so I KNOW they are pretty darn good.  But, just to double check, I might post my recipe soon, so I can get outside input.