Snickadoodas via. Janea

I've been getting tons of requests for me to share my Snickerdoodle recipe. Well, here you go!!


Snickadoodas
Bake: 10 minutes + plus, eh... a minute for luck
Yield: about 25 cookies

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1/2 cup butter, softened (I use a huge tub of Country Crock. It's the best tasting, in my opinion, than those butter stick things)
• 2 eggs
• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons cream of tarter
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Mix 1/4 cup sugar and the cinnamon in a small bowl. Set aside.
3. Mix 1 1/2 cups sugar, shortening, butter and eggs in a large bowl with a large spoon. I've never actually tried to do this with an electric mixer before. I mean, it could work, but I'd rather use my hands.
4. Plop in flour, cream of tarter, baking soda and salt on top of the mixture and then mix it all together. I tried mixing them into the mixture but the dough ended up being waaay too sticky in the end. Adding everything and then mixing them makes it easier to shape them without having to wash your hands every 5 minutes.
5. Shape dough into 1 1/4-inch or so balls. Roll in the sugar-cinnamon mixture you set aside before. Place about 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Unless you have an enormous oven and huge cookie sheets, you'll have to use 2 cookie sheets. Bake about 10 minutes on the middle rack. Don't put both cookie sheets in at the same time or you'll get burnt or under-cooked cookies. Who wants that?
6. Once the 10 minutes is up, open the oven to see if they're golden-ish. If they're still puffy and yellow-ish, bake for 1 more minute. If not, take them out and place the cookie sheet on a cooling rack before actually taking the cookies off.
7. While those are cooling on the cookie sheet-cooling rack, put the other cookie sheet in for another 10 minutes.
8. Wait a couple minutes then take a spatula to the cookies and place them directly onto the cooling rack to cool. This makes it so that the cookies don't fall apart right out of the oven. The sugar-cinnamon on top hardens the outside of the cookies and it makes it easier to take off the cookie sheets.
9. Let cookies cool for about 20 minutes or so before you eat them. Or just eat them whenever you feel they're cool enough. They're awesome warm. Enjoy! Let me know what you think when you make them! They're awesome this time of year.

Happy November

Well, it's officially the holiday season. I'm excited about this winter. I've started singing Christmas carols all the time now. Thanksgiving is just around the corner and I can't wait. So many things are happening! I love this time of year!

My one year anniversary was October 25th. It really wasn't terrible. I mean, yes, I had a fever Friday and Saturday but I got to spend the whole day at home and rest. It was good quality time at home and I got the rest I needed to come back Monday. While sick, I was still able to do this.



Work's becoming more and more awesome. Our new beverage lineup starts Tuesday. We're starting a Gingersnap Latte, bringing back our Eggnog Latte, and promoting our Peppermint Mocha with chocolate curls and peppermint whip on top. It's going to be awesome. Plus, November 27th is the start of our Product (Red) promotion. We're going to raise more money that goes toward African charities by selling (Red) products. We even get red aprons!

I'm going to be training 3 people at a time in about 2 weeks. I literally mean 3 people at a time too. It's going to be like a mini class. Not just training one person one day and another person another day. This is going to be tough for me since I'm used to only having one at a time, but I think I can do it. It will be fun. We need the people.

School's almost done too. I think I've got about a month to go. I've got a test coming up today in my business class, which I did do some studying, and a paper due Wednesday for my Psychology class, which is real simple.

Oh we had a Wootoff about a week and a half ago. It was fun but tiring. I got to host the night after the WootOff, too. It was my first time hosting a Woot night item change. It was a different crowd than I'm used to but it was actually really fun. I love WootTV and everyone affliated.

Well, I should get some sleep before my test tomorrow. I've also got to close at work again so I should get some rest anyway.

Starrrrbucks

Finally got more hours this week. It's probably not very good that forgot I had a class tomorrow and told my manager I can work open to 12:45pm tomorrow. Ah well. All for the sake of teh cashes.

Finally changed up my storefront. Looks for "fallish", like my channel.

Oh! Oh! I got the mousepad in the mail and it looks AWESOME! It is so much better than my old flimsy one.


Digsby has become a big part in keeping up with emails, instant messages and social networks. It's kind of like a chat client that sends notifications you're needing. I noticed it does get a bit slow sometimes and other times it doesn't delete or update when you try to. It is pretty convenient though, at least for keeping up with chat clients.

My one year of lifecasting is coming up! I'm excited and I have no idea what I'm going to do for it. Maybe I'll go back to the basics and just sit there and stare at the chatroom trying to figure out what is going on. Ahhh. Brings back memories.

Alright, its time to dance.

1 Winner, 2 Videos, and 3 New Baristas.

First off, congratulations to littleboo from justin.tv for winning the Mousepad Contest! It's an awesome design and I can't wait to use it. Also, a big thanks for everyone else who submitted a design. I wish I could get one of each!!

I'm going to skip to the third subject real quick. At work, I'm training 2 new baristas, soon to be 3 once I finish with one of these. It's quite a work out and sometimes I forget to give both of us breaks. I talk quite a lot during the training so I also tend to lose breath/my voice.

So, onto the videos. I asked Dennis, jokingly, to sing a song to me and he actually did it! Just watch.

Mousepad Finalists!

Here are the 5 finalists of the mousepad contest!



Finalist #1

















Finalist #2


















Finalist #3














Finalist #4

















Finalist #5
















Thanks to all who participated! For copyright reasons, I couldn't use some of the entries, but they were still awesome! Remember, winner's entry will be created into a mousepad that I'll use on a daily basis and the winner will get a mousepad as well!

You get one vote so make it count!!

"You Know How I Know You Don't Blog Enough?"

They changed the Blogger Dashboard and you had no idea.

Hah. Yeah, I should do this more often. It gives me a more sense of completeness when I finish one.

But anyway, work's going awesome at the moment. We had the busiest day I've worked on Saturday. The scare with Hurricane Ike hit everyone so they decided they didn't want to be at home if the tropical storm hit them. They'd rather be stuck at Starbucks drinking coffee. I mean, who wouldn't? It's a tiny cafe that would probably lose electricity and water, but it's coffee! People would eat the beans if they had to!

Oh! Speaking of Starbucks, fall is hitting. I'm in love with the cold weather and I'm so happy I can start drinking my Americanos again without drinking 2 sips and starting to sweat like a pig!

Trans-Siberian Orchestra tickets are back in sale! They're coming to Dallas on January 3rd. I'm hoping I can buy the tickets this year. I even got a little ahead of myself and took the day off from work. I love the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I know some people that don't so I'll state the reasons I love them so much.

1. I love Christmas
2. I love rock music
3. I love people that sing Christmas songs
4. Their TV specials are so intriguing
5. Santa Claus isn't some huge red figure in their shows. The music and lyrics are more important.
6. I've always wanted to play the cello in a concert

So as you can see, the reasons stand firm. I will go to a concert before I die. I will go to at least 2.

Watch my vlog for more info about me!

Blogging from School

Hey everyone. I'm just blogging from school in my Intro to Business class. We're meeting in the library for our yearly computer research class. These things are...informative.

My fruit and vegetable diet is going okay. I've cheated so much, but I've lost a little weight.

Oh lord. Why am I blogging? I have nothing to say.