Cocoa Pebbles Treats

It's probably not a good idea to change hobby but hobby is a hobby right?  Thinking about the recent years, I went from making Bucilla Xmas stockings to jewelry making to the latest - cookie making/decorating!  I know my son would definitely enjoy my new hobby than the previous ones.  So I left work early to have anniversary lunch with hobby at Pierponts at KC Union Station.  The food was decent and prices seem reasonable as well.  Maybe we were there for lunch so it wasn't as expensive as we expected.  I happened to have a Groupon that I bought few weeks ago.  We ordered Calamari, fried steak, coffee & ancho sirloin, ice tea and still have money left for a dessert.  Hubby suggested ordering a creme brulee to go.  I went home and my boy just came back from school.  He was hungry.  So he ate part of his daddy's fried steak and the creme brulee for dessert.  I asked him to give me a bite, he said no, it's mine!  I guess the creme brulee was very good!  He did share with grandpa though, grandpa is always his favorite person!

Since I was totally in the cookie making mode.  I picked up my daughter and went for shopping.  First we stopped by Hobby Lobby and picked up the Hello Kitty cookie cutter.  I plan to make some Hello Kitty cookies for my baby girl's first birthday.  Then we headed to Michaels to check out more baking items as I have some 40% off coupons!  I found a circle cookie cutter set, some popsicle sticks, and a Halloween mini cookie cutter set.  Of course, I won't be using them all at once but I do plan to use them in the coming weeks!  We also stopped by grocery store to pick up some necessary items that I needed to make the cocoa pebbles treats for.  One thing that completely escaped my mind was that I was supposed to pick up my son an hour ago before my shopping ended.  I called and was relief that my husband had already picked him up from his afternoon trip with grandpa.

The recipe for the Cocoa Pebbles Treats was adapted from Cookies and Cups.  Of course I don't have everything that I needed i.e. tootsie rolls (never liked them).  I used giant pink marshmallow for the fangs and beaks.  You can see them in the pictures.  I also don't feel like making so much sugar item at one time as normally only my son and I would eat the sweets that's not in form of cakes in my house.  So I halved the recipe and came up with 7 cookies.  I made 4 spiders and 3 owls.  I also made 2 little stars out of the scraps and put them in a sandwich bag with a note that said - "You are my super star, I love you!  Mommy" for my son.  I left it at his seat on the dinning table so he would see that when he sits down for breakfast.  Of course that made his morning

Monday night, we made some homemade Leeks and Pork dumplings for dinner.  As usual that we used store bought wrappers.  But we had some extra filling left.  My dad mentioned it'd be nice if my mom was here so she could make some wrappers.  I think to myself, why not?  So I dig out my mom's recipes and found there's one for dumpling wrappers.  I cut the recipe down to 1/4 and that was just enough for the fillings that we had left.  Here's a picture of them after cooked!

Chinese Dumpling Wrapper

Ingredient:
4 C of all purpose flour
2C of water
1 ts salt

Instruction:
Mix all in a big bowl.  Knead until a dough ball form.  There shouldn't be any flour left in the bowl, flour shouldn't stick to hands nor the bowl.  Dough itself looks smooth.  Cover and let it rest for 30 mins to 1 hour.  On lightly floured surface roll the dough into 1/2-3/4 inch thick stick.  I only work on dough a little at a time and keep the rest covered.  Once the stick is formed, cut it with a butter knife or dough cutter into 1/2 inch.  Roll the 1/2 inch dough into ball and press down.  Using rolling pin to roll them into circles.  Make sure you keep dust some flour on them so they don't stick together.  You can either cover them with a kitchen towel while you roll out the rest or make dumplings as you go.  I made the dumplings as I go to avoid having to cover them or dry out.